MORAL REFORMS 



SUGGESTED IN A 



PASTORAL LETTER, 



REMARKS ON PRACTICAL RELIGION 

/ 

By A! CLEVELAND COXE, 

Bishop of Western New York. 



Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier mat- 
ters.— St. MATTHEW XXIII. 23. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO. 

1869. 



Ttf 



\3V 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, 

By A. CLEVELAND COXE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Northern District of New York. 



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Printed by Matthews & Warren, 
buffalo, n . y . 



CONTENTS 



Page, 

I. Pastoral Letter, 9 

II. Moral Reforms, 13 

1. A Religion for Use. 

2. A Recent Appeal. 

3. Unrebuked Vice. 

4. Signs of the Times. 

5. Obvious Duties. 

6. Christian Marriage. 

7. Heathenish Houses. 

8. The Transition. 

9. Puritanism. 

10. The Reaction. 

11. The Standard. 

12. Homicides. 

13. Mothers. 

14. What Marriage Means. 

15. The Remedy. 

16. A Jesuit's Argument. 

17. The Truth of the Matter. 

18. An Answer to the Jesuit. 

19. The Primitive Church. 

20. The Means of Grace. 

21. Instrumentalities. 

22. Wife and Mother. 

23. Experience. 

24. Convictions. 

25. Hopeful Signs. 

26. Conclusion. 



VI 



Contents. 



III. The True Work of Woman, 

The Feast of Mothers. 

The Power of Woman. 

Homes. 

A Revival Needed. 

The Appeal. 

The Churching- Office. 

Conscience in all Things. 

Minor Proprieties. 

Practical Matters. 



page. 

• 59 



IV. Illustrations 



79 



12 



Deaconesses. 

The Education of Conscience. 

Direction. 

Moloch Worship. 

The Need of Christian Unity. 

Cheap Education. 

Family Reading. 

Family Prayers. 

The Lord's Day. 

Common Schools. 

The House Bond. 

The Future. 



PASTORAL LETTER. 



The following Pastoral Letter was addressed to the Dio- 
cese of Western New York, on the 30th of January, 1869. 



PASTORAL LETTER. 



The solemnities of Lent, now about to begin, justify me 
in calling you, as myself also, to renewed repentance, medi- 
tation and sincere confession, with prayer. 

The late Pastoral Letter of the House of Bishops sug- 
gests those practical matters to which attention should be 
particularly directed, and I need add little to my request that 
you may heed those admonitions and study the Holy Scrip- 
tures, " whether these things are so/' 

The enormities of theatrical exhibitions, and the lascivi- 
ousness of dances too commonly tolerated in our times, are 
there so specially pointed out as disgraceful to the age, and 
irreconcilable with the Gospel of Christ, that I feel it my 
duty to the souls of my flock to warn those who run with 
the world to " the same excess of riot " in these things, that 
they presume not to come to the Holy Table. 

Classes preparing for Confirmation are informed that I will 
not lay hands, knowingly, on any one who is not prepared 
to renounce such things, with other abominations of " the 
world, the flesh and the devil." 

Let all such choose deliberately whom they will serve ; 
and if salvation be worth striving for, let them be persuaded 
to a sober life, to self-denials, and to the pure and innocent 



io - Pastoral Letter. 

enjoyments which the Gospel not only permits, but which it 
only can create. 

It is high time that the lines should be drawn between 
worldly and godly living; and I see no use in a Lent that is 
not sanctified to such ends. 

I have heretofore warned my flock against the blood-guilt- 
iness of infanticide. If any doubt existed heretofore as to 
the propriety of my warnings on the subject, they must now 
disappear before the fact that the world itself is beginning to 
be terrified by the practical results of the sacrifices to Mo- 
loch which defile our land. There are scientific and statis- 
tical documents before the people which fully sustain my 
remonstrances. 

Again I warn you that they who do such things cannot 
inherit eternal life. If there be a special damnation for 
those who " shed innocent blood," what must be the portion 
of those who have no mercy upon their own flesh ? 

Dearly beloved, " save yourselves from this untoward gen- 
eration." 

Your affectionate bishop, 

A. C. C. 



MORAL REFORMS. 



The ^following remarks were addressed to the Clergy of 
the Convocation of Erie, in the form of a Conference, i?i 
St. James's Church, Batavia, on Wednesday, March .31, 
1869. 



Moral reforms 



i. 

Wanted, a Religion for Use. 

The practical temper of the American people 
demands of religion that it should be useful. A 
deep and growing suspicion' that unreality and 
hollowness are characteristics of many forms of 
popular piety has much to do with the growth 
of iniquity and indifference among us. Now, if 
the ministers of Christ are prepared to assert 
their commission, by a struggle with prevailing 
immorality and vice, the utility and grandeur of 
their calling will be demonstrated. If we wish 
men to believe in the Apostolical Succession, let 
us manifest its power to revive the. apostolical 
spirit, and to inspire every branch of church or- 



1 4 Moral Re/or 



ms. 



ganization with the life and energy of the Prim- 
itive Day. The first followers of Christ were 
trained, in the school of John the Baptist, to re- 
buke vice ; and while John's Master afterwards 
taught them Grace and Truth in their fulness, 
He also gave them the highest example of lov- 
ing fidelity in scourging sin. 



II. 

A Recent Appeal to Conscience. 

The late Pastoral of the House of Bishops 
was addressed, in large proportion, to the 
conscience of the nation. To enforce it in a 
specific point, rather hinted at than stated in 
that Letter, was the main purpose of my own 
Lenten Pastoral. It" now becomes the duty of 
the reverend Clergy, and of the heads of house- 
holds, to lay to heart these warnings, if they be, 
indeed, appropriate to the times, and to enforce 
them in parishes and in families, as occasion may 
require. A mighty reformation of manners has 
become essential even to the temporal prosper- 



The Dangers of Unrebuked Vice. 1 5 

ity of our country, and Christians are bound to 
effect it: for "if the salt have lost its savour" 
wherewith shall the land be salted ? 



III. 

The Dangers of Unrebuked Vice. 

It is something that sin be not without rebuke. 
Even if we cannot, immediately, apply the rem- 
edy, it is something gained if Christians cry out 
against the pestilence and give alarm to souls, 
against the "superfluity of naughtiness," and the 
" overflowings of ungodliness." It is something 
that, at least, " our eyes gush out with water, 
because men keep not God's law." For if our 
youth grow up amid the scenes of shame and 
the open licentiousness of our days, without 
hearing any remonstrance, or being warned that 
such things are wicked and hateful to the Most 
High, the result may be easily foreseen. They 
will breathe the atmosphere of vice, till their 
own habits are formed in corruption : and our 
civilization will sink to a still lower stage of dis- 



1 6 Moral Reforms. 

solute living. Then, the carcase will be ready 
for the birds of prey, to which, in righteous retri- 
bution, God will give it over for destruction. 



IV. 

Signs of the Times. 

I have observed with surprise, not unmingled 
with gratitude, that the secular press has in a 
remarkable manner responded to my words, 
with an acknowledgment that they are just, 
and that the times require plain dealing. In 
fact, the daily newspaper, in every part of the 
land, is a constant comment on our fearful moral 
degeneracy. Rapes, murders and adulteries are 
the staple of our news ; divorce cases and other 
scandals, and all the nauseous reports of our 
courts of justice, are given in full to the public, 
with revolting illustrations ; the village fence is 
covered with pictorial placards which no eye can 
escape, «in which the female form is displayed in 
nudity, and in attitudes of indecency which 
ought to excite disgust as well as indignation. 



Signs of the Times. 1 7 

In our great public schools, boys and girls are 
herded together with little reference to propri- 
ety or delicacy; and, as I have been credibly in- 
formed, a licentious press, in New York, has 
found means to supply these schools with im- 
moral books and pictures which pass from hand 
to hand, and of which even a moment's sight is 
poison to the soul. The maiden who has un- 
guardedly looked on such things has received a 
wound which nothing can obliterate. The scar, 
if nothing worse, must remain in the mind for 
life. And while such are the less obvious perils 
of the young, few give a moment's thought to the 
evils they encounter even in respectable soci- 
ety. At an age when they should still be chil- 
dren, they read licentious novels, frequent the 
most shameful theatrical shows, and are often 
permitted to take a full share, without any re- 
straint from the presence of parents or guard- 
ians, in private entertainments which are far 
from innocent ; which are marked by wanton 
dances and indelicate undress, by excess of wine 
and greedy feasting, and by revellings until the 
morning hours. Shall these heathenish orgies 
be tolerated among Christians ? Shall Christian 



1 8 Moral Reforms. 

pastors utter no entreaties that the lambs of the 
flock may be saved- from such pollutions ? 



V. 

Obviotts Ditties. 

The commands of God require us to -warn 
men of their perils, " whether they will hear or 
will forbear." " Cry aloud, spare not," says the 
prophet; " show my people their .sins, and the 
house of Israel'their transgressions." And all 
our admonitions should be coupled with inter- 
cessions, that the power of the Holy Spirit 
may accompany our words. Such should be 
our dependence. 

Let us go to the root of evils which are 
the subject of general complaint. Why are 
the clergy ill-supported and our missionaries 
starved ? Why is there so little offered for the 
House of God, when there is always plenty of 
money for the pleasures of the world ? Is it 
not because those who profess and call them- 
selves Christians are worldly ? Look at the 



Christian Marriage. 19 

superfluous dressing ; the vain costuming ; the 
dazzling adornments of women. See what men 
expend for wines, for cigars, for horses, for every 
form of luxury, and almost for every form of 
vice. There's the secret. Little is left for 
God who has made them stewards only of what 
they dare to call their own, and who will cer- 
tainly bring them to a dreadful account. And 
shall no trumpet be blown when such guiltiness 
defiles the sanctuary itself ? 



VI. 

Christian Marriage. 

Our Church puts the highest honour upon the 
marriage-state, and celebrates it in the house of 
God, in a form of words which has come down 
to us from ancient days, and which is incompar- 
able for its beauty and for the great principles 
it embodies. The Christian Mother is the 
source of the Christian Family, and Christian 
Society is founded on the purity of the Wife, 
her honour and fidelity, and on the blessings she 



20 Moral Reforms. 

communicates to her household. Unless these 
fundamental principles are recognized and made 
operative, we labour in vain to build up the par- 
ish, or the diocese. But, alas ! there is reason 
to believe that marriage itself is degraded in 
the popular mind, and even by ministers of re- 
ligion. It is generally reputed that a mock- 
marriage was not long ago celebrated at a fair 
by the pastor of a respectable congregation ; 
and that another popular preacher consented to 
marry a pair, without prayer or benediction, in a 
public park ; while others have been married in 
railway carriages and even in a balloon ! All this 
implies a state of public morals which the great 
Roman satirist would lack words to describe. 
The multiplying of divorces and the low views 
of matrimony which abound are not unconnec- 
ted with that sickening feature of American 
life, the rejection of decent house-keeping and 
the herding of whole communities in hotels. 
Such living, except in transient emergencies, is 
wholly inconsistent with the practice of domestic 
piety, and is attended with perils innumerable. 
It is a mode of life which begets idleness, self- 
indulgence, sensuality and crime. To the young 



Heathenish Houses. 2 1 

it is as a canker in the bud ; it taints the very 
blossom of their beauty. The growth of Mor- 
monism is hardly to be wondered at, when such 
caravanserais are popular at the very heart of 
our social system. We have one polygamous 
State, and communities scattered throughout 
the land which imitate Utah, and which are said 
to be increasing. What must be the secret 
source of such diseases on the surface ? And 
is the Church of God to lift up no voice of 
alarm ? Is she to see the infection spreading 
among her own children, and not cry aloud ? 



VII. 

Heathenish Houses. 

The adorning of homes has come to be pro- 
fane. Heathen emblems are wrought into 
arabesques and vignettes. Even gross symbols 
are to be seen in the decorations of walls and cei- 
lings. The most shameful statue, save one, to 
be seen in Europe, has become a favourite and 
stands in bronze or marble, in the drawing- 



22 Moral Reforms. 

rooms of Christians. The late Queen of Naples 
ordered this figure to be locked up : she resen- 
ted its exposure, in the Museum, as an insult to 
her sex. And this was in Naples, in a city 
filled with lust and public shame. . Yet Ameri- 
cans buy the same figure at costly prices and set 
it before their sons and daughters, in their 
homes. Nay, not homes ; for houses cease to 
be homes when' they cease to be pure and 
lovely. Home is a Christian idea. Everything 
in a Christian's home should minister to thoughts 
of purity and truth. I am sorry to add that many 
forms of nominal Christian Art are even worse 
than pagan. The Invisible God is often rep- 
resented in works of Romish origin ; and one 
would think that the very stones of the wall 
would cry out against some of the pictures which 
are hung on them, for Christians to gaze upon. 



VIII. 

A Transitioit Period. 
Something must be considered, it is true, for 



A Transition Period. 23 

the period of transition through which our civili- 
zation is now struggling. We may trust that 
there is a struggle and that it will not be over- 
come. Sudden wealth and other causes have 
forced upon this generation surprising changes 
and corresponding dangers. Until very lately, 
the American people were even primitive in 
their simplicity. Our higher" Society was old, 
and limited to the older States ; and it too was 
primitive in its habits, and even in its pleasures ; 
and, while less artificial, was much more refined 
than what is called " Society" in our days. Ex- 
cept in New England, our own Church largely 
influenced Social taste and the character of the 
educated classes, even beyond its pale ; but a 
severe Puritanism had the mastery of the. popu- 
lar mind and manners, and foreign travellers ac- 
cused the people of a prudery which is nice be- 
cause it is fundamentally coarse. Under the pop- 
ular religion, the emotions were made the test 
of repentance and of faith. Moral duties were 
little preached upon. The ten commandments 
were not even recited in public worship, and 
the Lord's Prayer was rarely hearcU Even 
Scripture-Lessons were exceptional features of 



24 Moral Reforms. 

Puritan worship. And, in the practice of this 
system almost all forms of amusement were pro- 
scribed. It was in this proscription that the 
great distinction was established between the 
world and the faithful. The pious were sup- 
posed to have renounced pleasures the most in- 
nocent, and they were more frequently subjected 
to a rigid discipline for any indulgence in for- 
bidden enjoyments, than for habitual untruthful- 
ness, slandering, or over-reaching in trade. 



IX. 

Puritanism. 

Far be it from me to disparage the piety of 
any Christians, whose prayers and good works 
contribute to the health of the Nation. Even 
the stern piety of the New England Puritans, 
in spite of its narrowness and unloveliness, is to 
be commended in comparison with the open un- 
godliness which has come in its stead. I doubt 
not the homely and simple but rigidly conscien- 
tious devotion which Burns eulogizes in his "Cot- 



Ptiritanism. 25. 

ter's Saturday Night," survives in many humble 
homes throughout our country. But experience 
proves that Puritanism cannot long outlive the 
homelier forms of social life. Refinement and 
education shrink from the irreverence and coarse- 
ness of extemporized public worship ; and the 
result is irreligion and unbelief, unless the Church, 
with her venerable liturgic forms, her grand his- 
tory, and her sweet, domestic influences, inter- 
poses a timely refuge and invites the wanderer 
to her Ark. 

A clergyman, eminent for his churchmanship 
and for a life of noble devotion to his priestly 
work, lately said to me, "I tremble for the fu- 
ture when I observe the disregard for the Lord's 
Day which is every where growing upon the 
land, the neglect of the second service of Sun- 
days, and the decay of household worship. Com- 
pared with what is now prevalent, there is some- 
thing great in the fierce old Puritan Sabbath, 
perversely conscientious though it was. If it 
failed to exhibit the love of Christ, it had in it 
much of the fear of God." 

I thank my reverend brother for his remark. 
It is just ; and it is exemplary, because some 



26 Moral Reforms. 

minds are so petty that they cannot see any 
good in a wrong system. But, after this ad- 
mission, I fear it must be said that the Puritans 
by making a Jewish Sabbath of the Lord's Day, 
have entailed upon us the very revolt complained 
of. The law of reaction is everywhere at work 
where Puritanism once had sway. 



X. 

The Reaction. 

Only thirty years ago Dubufe's " Adam and 
Eve " was a shock to the popular conscience : 
nude figures were hardly endured even in a pic- 
ture representing Sacred History. But, the old 
story of popular reactions has found a new illus- 
tration. The Age of Cromwell was succeeded 
by that of Charles the Second ; the reign of the 
saints by that of the satyrs; and the Puritan 
morals of America seem to be giving away to 
those of the Mormons. 

With the influx of wealth and with the ocean 
steamer, foreign travel became common. Not 



The Reaction. 27 

that kind of travel which ennobles and refines ; 
for Americans rushed through Europe for ex- 
citement and pleasure, and rarely formed any ac- 
quaintances among the people of older nations, 
except such as their money might command. 
The fashions of what is called the demi-monde 
were imported as if they were European ele- 
gancies, and much that belongs only to the vices 
of the older world was, unsuspectingly, natural- 
ized in America, as if it were reputable. To 
the new views and manners thus imported, the 
simple village habits of our people were as fuel 
to flame. The morals bred of decay tainted 
our young life. The safeguards which an older 
civilization has been forced to throw around the 
young, to save them from premature exposure 
to its vices, were here unknown. In the public 
ways, in the midnight revel, in places of public 
resort, in driving, riding and even in bathing, and 
in the idle routine of hotel life, young girls were 
often left without matronly protection or over- 
sight. In a word, the shepherdess was intro- 
duced to Comus and left in charge of his route, 
and nobody seemed to fear the result. But 
the consequences will not be survived by the 



28 Moral Reforms. 

present generation. All things, for the present, 
are turned upside down. Young men cannot 
afford to marry ; young women prefer the mo- 
neyed profligate to the virtuous but purseless 
scholar, or professional man ; and village maid- 
ens learn to scorn the farmer, the merchant and 
the mechanic. The love of finery often makes 
them the prey of the dissolute. In vain we 
preach, one day in seven, while the Enemy has 
the whole week more or less in his possession. 
Even our Sundays are threatened by the 
Strangers who come in to sojourn, and would 
needs be our judges : and what is there left to 
us, but the promise — "when the Enemy shall 
come in like a flood the Spirit of the Lord shall 
lift up a standard against him" ? 



XL 

The Standard. 

That standard, I suppose to be lifted up in 
the voice and testimony of our Scriptural Church. 
But the Church itself needs to be purified. A 



The Standard. 29 

more strict fidelity to our own doctrines and can- 
ons is the primary demand. How desirable it 
is that our flocks should be more and more in- 
structed in the morals of the Gospel ; not indeed 
to the neglect of doctrine, but so as to turn doc- 
trine to its grand utility — the " saving of the peo- 
ple from their sins '." " For this purpose the Son 
of God was manifested that he might destroy 
the works of the devil." How vain is ritual, 
with its incense and oblations, while hands are 
red with blood, and when the Spirit is crying — 
" Wash you, make you clean." When the apos- 
tolic churches were "giving heed unto fables 
which ministered questions rather than godly 
edifying," the young bishop of Ephesus was 
charged, by St. Paul, to teach them that " the 
end of the commandment is love out of a pure 
heart, and a good conscience, arid faith un- 
feigned." Till these ends are magnified, in life 
and doctrine, " to what purpose is the multitude 
of our sacrifices" ? One almost hears amid the 
joys of the Paschal Feast, the rebuke of the 
ancient prophet — " Your new moons and your 
sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away 
with: it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting." 



30 Moral Reforms. 

XII. 

Homicides. 

As to those crimes which I have likened to 
the sacrifices of Moloch, I am glad that our phy- 
sicians are beginning to be preachers. They 
tell us of frightful retributions ; of lunatic cells, 
and early graves, as the consequences ; of hag- 
gard and premature old age, unenlivened by the 
sweet society of sons and daughters, and terri- 
fied by conscience as by the ghosts of murdered 
babes. Truly, as Scripture says of another 
class of sinners, " they receive in themselves 
that recompense of their errours which is meet," 
because "in their skirts is found the blood of 
the souls of the poor innocents." If legisla- 
tion sleeps, while such things are preying like 
a canker upon the very vitals of the Nation, 
surely the pulpit should be heard. In their 
late Pastoral, the House of Bishops spake as 
with the authority of an old prophet to the 
People. 



Mothers. 3 1 

XIII. - 

Mothers. 

The Christian Mother is the true woman in 
her highest glory, and till Christian women un- 
derstand this, nothing that can be said will be 
effectual. 

The grand defect of Puritanism is its utter 
lack of provision for the wants of the young. 
A hearty, cheerful, natural and yet spiritual, 
Christian life for children, is something for which 
it makes no place. Christian nurture, training, 
and the development of infantile piety into full 
grown Christian principle, must depend on the 
Baptismal and Confirmation Offices, and the 
Liturgical system of the Church, in connection 
with the Christian Year. 

But for the earliest application of all this to the 
mind and conscience of the young, the Church 
depends on the well-ordered Christian Family; 
and in that Family, while the father is the Priest, 
the wife and the mother is enthroned as a Queen, 
and is the constant, ever-present symbol to her 



32 Moral Reforms. 

house of the Church itself, the spouse of Christ, 
and "the mother of us all." 

My own Pastoral was designed to give point 
more especially to one of the warnings of our en- 
tire Episcopate directed to " women that are at 
ease," and " careless daughters." I believe there 
is as little of this sin among the mothers and 
daughters of our own communion as can be 
credited elsewhere ; but there can be no doubt 
that the warning is everywhere needed. Women 
often live " at ease and without care," because 
they are fearfully criminal, in the means whereby 
they have avoided the glorious duties of mater- 
nity, and abdicated the throne to which God has 
called them in the Christian Family. There 
are few Samuels because there are so few Han- 
nahs ; and till this radical evil is put away, much 
of our pastoral work, dear brethren, is in vain 
and must be in vain. 



XIV. 

What Marriage Means. 
The object and ends for which Holy Matri- 



What Marriage Means. 33 

mony is ordained of God are often defeated, and 
a sacrilege is committed in addition to other 
crimes/ Marriage was ordained to secure "a 
godly seed," and domestic piety. The promise 
is " to live together, according to God's ordi- 
nance, in the Holy Estate of Matrimony." But, 
where the object of Matrimony is shunned, in 
effect the wife degrades herself to a mistress, 
and the married life is desecrated, as the mere 
veil of a concubinage — - doubly criminal because 
sacrilegious and defiled with murder. Woe ! to 
such criminals if they embrace not, in sincere re- 
pentance, the gracious promise of the gospel — 
" though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as 
white as snow." 

We hear much said of schemes for employ- 
ing women ; but let women be reminded of 
their great and glorious mission, as wives and 
mothers. It is through the duties of these sta- 
tions that they pass with the highest qualifica- 
tions to others. The early Deaconesses were 
widows. 

a Malachi ii. 15. 



3 4 Mora I • Reforms. 

XV. 

What is the Remedy? 

And so, having spoken of the evil, I come to 
speak of the cure. I maintain that it is woman's 
mission to purify society. 

My attention has been directed to a pamphlet 
just published, a and purporting to be by a medi- 
cal man, a Frenchman by birth, and evidently a 
Roman Catholic. If the author had confined 
himself to professional limits and proprieties, I 
should have thanked him for a valuable rebuke 
of the times : but, as the end and aim of his essay 
are mainly polemical, I am not without suspic- 
ions that this is one of the thousand insidious 
agencies by which the society of Jesuits is every- 
where, secretly, operating upon the American 
people. 

The writer insists that the crime of ante- 
natal Infanticide prevails chiefly among Protes- 
tant women ; and he lays down as the result of 
his arguments these propositions : 

a Published in Portland, 1867. 



What is the Remedy ? 35 

I. " Protestantism has no power within itself 
to check the increase of abortion in its own 
community, and the united efforts of the whole 
medical profession, so far, have been utterly un- 
availing." 

II. " Catholicity alone can reach the evil, be- 
cause it has proved itself equal to the task from 
the time it first made its appearance amongst 
the Roman ladies, down to the present day." 

In the term " Protestantism " he means to in- 
clude not only the Inorganic Protestantism of 
the day, but also our own truly Catholic and 
Apostolic Church. 

The term "Catholicity," he confines obviously 
to the Roman or Tridentine Sect ; and his ob- 
ject is to recommend its peculiar institution of 
Auricular Confession to the American con- 
science. 

As similar efforts are now made, everywhere, 
and have found a place in our periodical litera- 
ture, I take this occasion to say a few words on 
the subject which may meet the difficulties thus 
artfully created in order to entrap the minds of 
our people. 



36 Moral Reform. 

XVI. 

A J esidf s Argument. 

The author very justly speaks of the preva- 
lence of this crime among the women of the Pa- 
gan Roman empire ; and he asserts, with equal 
justice, that it was Christianity that purified and 
elevated womanhood, till this vice became im- 
possible among Christian women. 

But he also insinuates that early Christianity 
was identical with Romanism ; and that the 
practice of Auricular Confession was then, as 
now, familiar to the Roman Christians. 

He must be a very ill-informed, or a very de- 
ceitful writer, in committing himself to proposi- 
tions so utterly false. For, first, not a trace of 
Modern Romanism can be found in the Chris- 
tianity of those ages, except in the form of 
heresies and corruptions which the Church de- 
nounced ; and, second, the practice of Auricu- 
lar Confession was unknown even to Roman 
Christianity until the thirteenth century, at least 
as a general institution. In its present shape of 



A Jesuit's Argument. 37 

" direction," it has grown up since the Council 
of Trent (A. D. 1563), which created the mod- 
ern " Roman Catholic Church," so-called, and 
gave the Latin Churches a new Creed and a 
new Constitution. Since then, the history of 
the Confessional has been one of the most 
polluted casuistry, and every crime that dis- 
graces humanity has flourished wherever it has 
had sway. 

It is plain, therefore, (1) that if Christianity 
reformed the Roman Empire, with respect to 
the sin of ante-natal infanticide, it effected this 
great reformation with no other than the very 
instrumentalities which are employed by our 
own Primitive Communion ; and (2) that Auri- 
cular Confession and the modern " Roman 
Catholic " system can claim no credit for this 
blessed work of the Primitive Church. When 
the author asserts that Roman Catholic women 
in America are much less addicted to this crime 
than their Protestant sisters, he implies that 
unmarried Romish confessors are in the habit 
of regulating the habits of women, in respect to 
their most delicate relations, by the secret com- 
munications of the Confessional ! it must be 
3 



38 Moral Reforms. 

obvious that an institution which can be used 
to promote population in this way, for the 
avowed purpose of obtaining, as soon as possi- 
ble, numerical preponderance in the nation, is 
one which can be prostituted to the vilest pur- 
poses, and which involves those "evil communi- 
cations that corrupt good manners." Certain it 
is that our criminal statistics do not prove any 
great preponderance of Romish over Protestant 
morality, nor do they lead us to admire a Con- 
fessional which restores the vilest criminal to 
an easy conscience, and to a new round of 
crime, on the performance of a slight penance, 
in which no profession of Contrition is absolute- 
ly requisite. 



XVII. 

The Truth of the Matter, 

The author furnishes a solution to his own 
statement, however, if it be true ; for he affirms 
that this crime of "voluntary abortion" is only 
found among women who are fashionable. Now 



The Truth of the Matter. 39 

the Romish population furnishes no appreciable 
proportion of this class, in our land ; so that 
he cannot prove the superior morality of 
those who are dupes of the Confessional. 
Fashionable women in France are not dis- 
tinguished by innocence in this respect above 
our own. We are glad to believe that women 
of the humbler classes are generally more obe- 
dient to the laws of Nature's God ; and we hon- 
our them as women and^ as Mothers, a far 
nobler title than that of " fashionable ladies." 

But, a physician may be supposed to know 
more about this sin than a clergyman has any 
right to know, so far as details are concerned. 
I will therefore confront this rash assault upon 
Americans, and their forms of piety, by the 
authority of an eminent physician, lately ad- 
dressed to a professional audience, at the Com- 
mencement Of a Medical College : 

" Fashion in morals ! witness, the atrocious 
soul and body imperilment by the avoidance 
of the sacred duties of legitimate maternity, 
by practices both indelicate and immoral. 
This is called an American fashion : it is cer- 
tainly a fashion, an immorality, a vice, but it 



40 Moral Reforms. 

is not an original American fashion. It is de- 
rived from that people who are Fashions chief 
votaries — who dethroned the God of the Bible 
and made adoration of a day to a painted crea- 
ture — miscalled reason. Medical men were the 
first to sound the alarm, both in its moral and 
physical aspects. Philosophers and statisticians 
re-echo it, in its national and generic relations. 
The religious and the secular press alike expose 
and denounce it — and the pulpit implores, per- 
suades and fulminates against it. This usage 
is not limited to any people, nor is it avoided, as 
has been stated, by those of any creed. Medical 
men know this. It is one of the banes of civil- 
ization. That it finds more congenial soil in 
our country than elsewhere, cannot, alas ! be 
denied. Poverty and inconvenience are urged 
in extenuation. These do not excuse infrac- 
tions of human law, much less of divine — but 
even the excuse is false — the real culprits are 
fashion, frivolity, laziness, selfishness, and, O 
tempora ! O mores ! — national demoralization. 
Let no one charge that our language is too 
plain. When persuasion and argument fail in 
private, the public heart must be stirred. If 



An Answer to the Jesirit. 41 

we would exist as a nation, this generic suicide 
must be stopped. Let us not follow, but be 
warned by the example of France — whose popu- 
lation is steadily decreasing, not from migration, 
war or pestilence, but from unnatural causes — 
the death-rate exceeding the birth-rate by at 
least 50,000 per annum. " a 

It would seem, then, that France, where 
women of fashion are so generally under the en- 
tire direction of Jesuit confessors, and where 
" Protestantism " hardly exists, is alike the 
model and the awful warning of American fash- 
ion, as respects this damning form of homicide. 



XVIII. 

An Answer to the Jesirit. 

It is strange that this Jesuitical pamphlet 
should have appealed to Primitive Church his- 
tory in favour of Romanism as the cure of the 
particular evil now under discussion. Was it, 
by a providential Nemesis, on purpose to justify 

a Hygiene, etc. By Thos. F. Rochester, M. D. Buffalo, 1869. 



42 Moral Reforms. 

me in stating a fact which ought not to be for- 
gotten, but which I should not have thought of 
bringing forward but for this insulting assault 
of a Romanist on the religious principles of my 
countrymen ? Unfortunately for the author, 
one of the earliest, if not the very earliest his- 
torical reference to this crime as existing among 
Christians, is the charge brought by a great 
bishop and saint, against a contemporary bishop 
of Rome, as the patron and pander of this in- 
iquity ! It is true the said bishop was no pope ; 
for no such dignitary as a modern pope was 
known to those ages : but Rome claims him 
as one of her popes and pays him worship as 
" Saint " Callistus. Whether he was a saint or 
a pope may be inferred from the lately recovered 
works of St. Hippolytus, who knew him person- 
ally and rejected him as a heretic and as one of 
the worst men that ever climbed, like a wolf, into 
the Christian fold. " He permitted women," 
says St. Hippolytus, " to degrade their own dig- 
nity . . . and thence it was that women, 
called believers, began to venture ... to 
destroy what was conceived. . . . Behold 
to what impiety the Lawless One proceeded, 



An Answer to the Jesuit. 43 

teaching adultery and murder, at the same 
time. 

It is remarkable that the words the Lawless 
One which Hippolytus uses here, are the same 
used by the Apostle in his prophetic portrait of 
the popes, which our translators render that 
Wicked* So that if any one wants to establish' 
the Romish claim to an early existence of Popery 
in the Church of Christ, I think the claim of Cal- 
listus to be a genuine Pope, can be more easily 
proved than that of any other bishop of Rome 
down to the days of the forged Decretals, by 
the aid of which Nicholas the First (A. D. 856) 
raised himself and his See to the " bad emi- 
nence" of genuine Popish imposture. Callis- 
tus, then, may be reckoned a pope, in some 
sense ; he was certainly a bishop of Rome ; and 
he was probably the first casuist, among Chris- 
tians, who ever approved of ante-natal infanti- 
cide and encouraged the practice. This is my 
answer to the Jesuit. 

a 2 Thess. ii. 8. 



44 Moral Reforms. 



XIX. 

The Primitive Church. 

The Church of the Primitive Ages had a 
work to do, which none but those familiar with 
the social life of the Gentiles of the Roman Em- 
pire can even tolerably comprehend. In the 
first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 
there is a portrait of Roman society which gives 
the ordinary reader some idea of what it was 
with which the Gospel came into conflict, in 
calling men to repentance. But, blessed be 
God, many of the enormities to which the Apos- 
tle refers are not even named among Christians, 
and few understand precisely to what he points. 
In writing to the Corinthians, again, he enumer- 
ates a few of the fearful iniquities which dis- 
graced that people, a and he adds — " Such were 
some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are 
sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of 
the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." 

a i Cor.,-, vi. 9. 



The Means of Grace. 45 

Such was the success of the Primitive Church, 
in thoroughly cleansing the vilest characters: 
and, I repeat it, all this was done with individ- 
uals and with nations, by the same means of 
grace which are now richly possessed by us. 
Go to Italy, to Mexico, to Brazil, and it will be 
found that the attempt of Popery to improve 
upon Primitive Christianity has had the reverse 
effect, and has brought back, in shameless pub- 
licity, among Clergy and Laity alike, all the 
vices of Paganism. The English Reformation 
has restored to us, in their purity, the simple 
ministries which, under God, were found equal 
to the utter destruction of Paganism and all its 
immoralities. What are those, means of cure ? 
What is the remedy ? 



XX. 

The Means of Grace. 

First of all, the Holy Ghost, by his voice in 
the Holy Scriptures is the grand purifier. It 
was because the Primitive Church read the 
3* 



46 Moral Reforms. 

Prophets and the Evangelists, in a known 
tongue, in all the services of public worship, 
that she became the source of new life to cor- 
rupt humanity. It was because the early Chris- 
tians loved the Scriptures and knew not a little 
of them by heart, that they became sanctified in 
all their domestic relations. It was when they 
chaunted the Psalter as they sat at the distaff, 
or drove the plow, that " all their children were 
taught of the Lord, and great was the peace of 
their children!' So the Christian Family be- 
came the foundation of Christian civilization ; 
and the Christian Mother, the name enshrined 
in its heart, as the glory of womanhood and of 
the human race. 

But the Primitive Church not only read the 
Scriptures, she preached the word as its faith- 
ful witness alike in doctrine and in morals. 
Her bishops from their saintly chairs, her pres- 
byters from the ambon, and all her people, each 
in his vocation and ministry, were faithful in let- 
ting their lights shine. They understood that 
"for this purpose the Son of God was mani- 
fested, that He might destroy the works of the 
Devil." And then, as now, the annual Easter 



Instrumentalities. 47 

Festival and its solemn Lent, called all the 
Faithful, year by year, to first love and to first 
Tories. Nothing could persuade a believer to 
forego his Easter Communion ; but then he un- 
derstood that he must prepare for it " by putting 
away leaven." He fasted and he repented, and 
he was received to the Great Communion ; and 
then he strove to go forward, as by the power 
of a new Resurrection " from dead works to 
serve the Living God." 



XXL * 

Instrumentalities. 

I have elsewhere endeavoured to instruct my 
Diocese as to the relation of the blessed Sacra- 
ments and of godly Discipline to the Moral 
System of the Primitive Church, so that I need 
not now dwell upon these. I would only di- 
rect your attention to the express intimations 
of Holy Scripture on this head. Let me recur, 
however, to my remark that the Sanctity of 
Marriage and the solemn celebration of it, as 



48 Moral Reforms. 

an Ordinance of God, which man cannot annul, 
are the fundamental principles on which Holy 
Scripture and the Church of Christ rear the eif- 
tire structure of Social Morality. Referring you 
to the many passages of God's word which sus- 
tain this assertion, let me add only two special 
citations from St Paul : 

"I will, therefore, that the younger women 
marry, bear children, guide the house, give 
none occasion for the adversary to speak re- 
proachfully.'^ 

Again, he says, with reference to the great 
Nativity of Christ, no doubt, but still with gen- 
eral reference to woman's painful but glorious 
Maternity : 

" She shall be saved in child-bearing, if they 
continue in faith and charity and holiness with 
sobriety." b 

Woman's mission as the mother and nurse 
of Immortals, and as the very image in this re- 
spect, of the Church and Spouse of Christ, was 
thus ennobled and kept before the primitive 
Christian women. Nor was the more intimate 
and detailed instruction of young married women 

a i Tim. iv. 14. h 1 Tim. i. 15. 



Instrumentalities. 49 

in this respect committed to sensual monks and 
whispering casuists. The Annas and Eliza- 
beths who, as deaconesses, might guide the 
young women, and other mothers in Israel, had 
these sacred functions given them. These were 
women's institutors in all modest and holy liv- 
ing, in Christian Morals. Thus, in the diocese 
of Crete, Titus, its bishop, is enjoined to exhort 
" the aged women that they be in behaviour as 
becometh holiness . . . that they may teach 
the young women to be sober, to love their hus- 
bands, to love their children, to be discreet, 
chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their 
own husbands, that the word of God be not 
blasphemed." The Christian Matron who is 
prepared to do this duty, in her own sphere, 
will find the Ethical books of Scripture, the Prov- 
erbs and the Psalms, the Prayer Book and the 
apocryphal books of Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, 
their all-sufficient text-books. I need suggest 
no other remedies against moral evil than those 
which the Holy Spirit and the Church have thus 
supplied. These were the remedies that cured 
the pagan women and made them Christians. 
Again, I say, it is not the prurient confessor 



50 Moral Reforms. 

who is to be -invoked " like coals to burning 
coals and as wood to fire," but I appeal to 
Christian Mothers to make their daughters 
Christians, by the rules I have shewn to be 
Scriptural, and as such the Wisdom of God and 
the power of His Holy Spirit. 



XXII. 

Wife and Mother. 

Where then are the Christian Mothers ? 
Once more we must turn to her to whom God 
has given the mission of purifying and sanctify- 
ing the Home, and of finding in it her realm, her 
sphere of duty, her earthly paradise of joy and 
peace. To make home happy ; to fill it with 
pure delight ; to make it bright all the year 
round with innocent mirth ; to teach children 
and husband to seek no external pleasure, and 
always to turn homeward for happiness, this is 
the work of woman ; woman only can do this 
for the Church and for the Nation ; and when 
this is done the Nation also will be a family. 



Testimony of Experience. 5 1 

The streams cannot run pure till the sources are 
thus purified. Oh ! that every power that can 
be invoked in the land, were only stimulated to 
make women understand the glory and the 
blessedness that belong to the Christian Wife 
and the Christian Mother. 



XXIII. 

Testimony of Experience. 

It was lately remarked by a candid Romanist, 
after twenty years' experience of his own re- 
ligion in Romish Europe, that the scenes of his 
youth, in truly Catholic England, often refresh 
his memory with a blessed contrast. " For a 
calm, unpresuming, uniform standard of practi- 
cal Christianity'' says this poor prodigal son, in 
the far country to which he foolishly and simply 
wandered, and where he yet sojourns, " I have 
seen nothing as yet, in any country, superior to 
that of the English parsonage and its surround- 
ings; go where I will I am always thrown back 
upon one of these as the most perfect ideal of a 



52 Moral Reforms. 

Christian Family ; a combination among its 
members of the highest intelligence, with the 
most unsullied purity and earnest faith, I ever 
witnessed on earth." This judgment is just ; it 
is true, also, of many of the cottage-homes of 
England, as it is also true of many of her halls 
and palaces. And it might be more true of 
America than of any nation in the world, in 
view of our plenty and of our resources of every 
kind, were only the Church its nurse and 
mother. The English Parsonage is the place, 
where, preeminently, the Christian- Life is reg- 
ulated by the Bible and the Prayer Book. 
Hence its intelligence, its purity and its joy. 
Nothing morose in its religion ; nothing extrav- 
agant in its mirth. Sundays are brighter than 
week-days. Christmas and Easter bring their 
peculiar delights, and all the year is full of true 
happiness, because it is full of Him whose lov- 
ing kindness is better than the life itself. 



Convictions. 5 3 

XXIV. 

Convictions. 

For every family in our dear country, in 
which Christ is worshipped and the Bible read, 
let us bless and praise God. On every such 
household, whatever its form of piety, let us in- 
voke a blessing. It is in houses like these that 
the salt of the land is found ; it is from such 
windows that even the smallest candle throws 
beams far into the region of surrounding night. 
The piety of many a Protestant dwelling is a 
beacon and a fountain to souls. But I must not 
conceal my convictions that " for a calm, unpre- 
suming, uniform standard of practical Christi- 
anity" — the Church of the Prayer Book is the 
great want of the American people. When 
will this be found out ? When will God give 
to our countrymen to see and learn that Or- 
ganic Christianity alone is able to organize so- 
ciety and to hold it on firm foundations, up to a 
uniform standard of Christian Morals ? 

I think this will never be, till we who are a 



54 Moral Reforms. 

" kind of first-fruits " of the Nation, in the en- 
joyment of these blessings, make a better use of 
them for ourselves and for our households. 
Alas ! that our ingratitude for such unspeakable 
mercies, and our misuse of the superior ad- 
vantages which God has given us, should be 
the stumbling-block of souls. 



XXV. 

Hopefid Signs. 

I do not despair of the Republic. If the late 
war has been followed by many of the usual 
consequences of civil wars, I hold it to be a 
most gratifying fact that it has not been fol- 
lowed by some of those evils which were most 
to be dreaded. Heroic virtues as well as gi- 
gantic crimes were exhibited in warfare, and 
peace has been ennobled by the marvellous ab- 
sorption of immense armies into the ordinary 
life and activity of the Nation. Great evils 
have passed away, forever, and conscience has 
been found to respond, almost universally, to 



Cojtchcsion. 5 5 

the principles of Divine Justice in what has 
been done and in what has been suffered. 
There is ground for hope, therefore, that a peo- 
ple which has gone through the trials of such 
an epoch, not without the development of great 
moral faculties, is not to be given up to " that 
swift destruction," which, in other respects, is 
portended by the vices of the times. The 
symptom which is most seriously to be consid- 
ered, is that of "the salt losing its savour." If 
Christians cease to be such, in reality, how can 
society he salted, and preserved from putrefac- 
tion ? 



XXVI.. 

Conclusion. 

When all the land of Egypt was given over 
to darkness, the children of Israel had light in 
their dwellings. When the Red Sea was about 
to swallow up the heathen, the waves thereof 
parted before the Ark of the Covenant, and 
made a way for the Faithful to pass onward, 
unharmed, toward the Promised Land. The 



56 Moral Reforms. 

object of my exhortations is to secure, at least 
for those who are called Christians, in our coun- 
try, a similar result. If we cannot make others 
follow our example, let us for ourselves and for 
our own households serve the Lord. If we 
cannot save our beloved country, let us secure 
to ourselves and to our children the unspeak- 
able blessings of the Covenant. Let our door- 
posts be sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb, 
and let ours be the happy homes, around which 
the angel of the Lord encamps, and over which, 
in love and mercy, is ever looking down the un- 
slumbering eye of the Shepherd of Israel. 



THE TRUE WORK OF WOMAN. 



The following Pastoral Letter was addressed to Chris- 
tian Women, in the Diocese of Western New York, 
o?i the Feast of the Purification, 1868. 



THE TRUE WORK OF WOMAN. 



I. 

The Feast of Mothers. 

My Christian Friends: 

The return of the cheerful Festival of the 
Purification, falling this year on a Sunday, in- 
spires me with a desire to speak to you, as sisters 
in Christ, addressing myself chiefly to those of 
you who are Mothers. As such, you are called 
to the highest glory of your sex, if indeed you 
be Christian Mothers, rejoicing in God your 
Saviour, like the blessed Mary, " the handmaid 
of the Lord." 

This is the Feast of Mothers. It is designed 
to remind you of the great example of her who 
was the Mother of our Lord, and who, as on 
this day, presented in the Temple, her holy 
child, the Light of the World. 



6o Moral Re/or 



ms. 



II. 

The Power of Woman. 

It is from the influence of Christian Mothers 
that the church receives the best of all gifts, her 
Timothys, her Agustines, her Kens, her Wil- 
sons, her Martyns, and her Hebers. 

It is the Christian woman that inspires men 
to be Christians, by her example to husbands, 
brothers, friends and children. It is the Chris- 
tian woman that creates the Christian Home — 
next to the Church of Christ the greatest source 
of happiness to a people and of prosperity to 
Nations. 

It is the Christian woman that proves the 
best auxiliary to the Christian minister, bring- 
ing her household under pastoral influences, 
and, like Lydia and Persis, and other Saints of 
the Scriptural Calendar, sustaining the work of 
Apostles. 

It is the Christian woman, who, like Dorcas, 
becomes the source of bounty to the poor, and 
the pattern of all good works. 



Homes. 6 1 

It is the Christian woman, who, like the 
blessed Virgin, becomes the well-spring of pu- 
rity to the world. 

It is the Christian woman who gives a charm 
to practical piety, tl walking in all the command- 
ments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless," 
like the holy Elizabeth. 

It is the Christian woman, who, like Anna, 
serves the Church in the Temple by fastings and 
prayers ; or who, like Phcebe, becomes the suc- 
courer of many, in the office of the Deaconess. 

Who cannot see, at a glance, that if more of 
our Christian women would rise to these high 
patterns of character, all the glory of the primi- 
tive day would revive ? 



III. 

Homes. 

It is not convents that we need. Holy Scrip- 
ture does not speak of such things. We want 
Christian families and holy women, devoted to 

4 



62 Moral Reforms. 

Woman's work in schools, and hospitals, and 
prisons, but not under extra-baptismal vows, 
nor disguised in Pharisaical mufflers. 

These are the wants of the Church. Thank 
God, they are already supplied, in large meas- 
ure, by the piety of thousands of women, who 
are true Sisters of Charity and Mothers in 
Israel. 

When, not long since, I was pointed to an 
immense Romish nunnery, I said — " Yes, but I 
have something better in my Diocese. For 
every cell in that doleful prison, I can show 
you a Christian home — such as Romanism 
never created and never can create ; a home 
such as the Bible and the Prayer Book have 
multiplied in England and America. The con- 
vents of Italy have destroyed that land, and 
are now perishing. The homes of England 
and America have made the most vigorous of 
peoples, and they are as lasting as the Christian 
Church," 



A Revival Needed. 63 



IV. 

A ''Revival Needed. 

But, the time has come when the Christian 
Home, and all schemes of Christian benevo- 
lence, must be revived and re-invigorated. 
It is Woman's mission to perform this glorious 
work, and so to rebuke the shameless schemes 
of some who would abase their sex to the level 
of habits and pursuits which are corrupting and 
degrading even to men. 

I write then, to call you, the Christian Women 
of my Diocese, to arise to the glory of your mis- 
sion, and to the work which it is given you to 
do, for your country and your God. 

I fear that here, as elsewhere, there are too 
many who have a very false estimate of what 
becometh women professing godliness. 

When I see, everywhere, the tawdry fashions, 
the costly vulgarity and the wicked extrava- 
gance of the times, I feel sure that thousands 
of American women are strangers to the first 



64 Moral Reforms. 

law of refinement — simplicity in manners and 
attire. 

When I see that thousands of American 
women read the most shameful romances and 
the most degrading newspapers ; frequent the 
vilest dramatic entertainments and join in dances 
too shocking to be described, I feel that Chris- 
tian matrons are becoming too few, and that 
a civilized heathenism is occupying the fields we 
have wrested from the Indians. 

When I read, daily, of the most ungodly 
divorces, and of crimes against social purity and 
against human life itself, which are too gross to 
be mentioned more particularly, I feel that too 
many of our countrywomen are without God 
in the world; and that radical reforms are ne- 
cessary in the systems of education on which the 
young women of America are dependent for 
their training. 

When I see thousands of households, in 
which young girls are reared for a life of pleas- 
ure, without reference to duty, I cannot wonder 
at these results, nor at the misery in which they 
involve families and communities. They sow 
the wind and reap the whirlwind. 



The Appeal. 65 

V. 

The Appeal. 

As a Christian Bishop, therefore, I make my 
appeal to you, Christian Women, and I ask you 
to begin the reformation, by faithfully bearing 
your testimony against all that tends to the de- 
gradation of your sex. I am the more urgent 
because much that is evil is not only winked 
at, but receives countenance in circles which 
ought to be exemplary. 

Resolve, first of all, that the Bible and the 
Prayer Book shall be the basis of the education 
of your children. The Bible, with its Book of 
Proverbs for young men, and its wonderful 
Psalter and Gospels and Epistles, besides, for 
the study of both sons and daughters. The 
Prayer Book, with its Chart of Life, mapped 
out from Scripture, in every part, and present- 
ing the whole duty of man and woman in an 
epitome. These are your grand securities in 
the education of your families. It is not enough 
that schools permit these to be used. I say it 



66 Moral Reforms. 

with a deep sense of my responsibility, no school 
in which these are not the ground-work of all 
instruction, are schools to which you can com- 
mit the souls of your precious children, with 
fidelity to the covenant made with God, in their 
baptism. You are bound to " train them up in 
the way in which they should go." If* you do 
this, and they should go astray (which is not 
probable), you "will have no cause for self-re- 
proach. If you fail in this greatest of duties, 
their probable ruin for Time and for Eternity 
will be upon your own head. The evil results 
will embitter your own life, and will bring you 
down with sorrow to the grave. 



VI. 

The Churching Office. 



The subject of this Festival reminds me that 
one of the offices of the Prayer Book has come 
to be almost disregarded. The neglect of that 
beautiful provision for sanctifying and glorifying 



The Churching Office. 67 

Maternity, " the Churching of Women," is dis- 
creditable to our civilization. It used to be ob- 
served, most sacredly, by virtuous women, of all 
conditions in life, as a tribute to their own self- 
respect ; by the lowly as a token of their honour- 
able marriage ; by the affluent as evidence of 
their refined and elevated views of the dignity 
of motherhood. To such motives a truly de- 
vout woman adds her sense of gratitude to God 
for the greatest of blessings, for the answer to 
her. prayers, and for her high vocation to be the 
educator of an immortal soul. It seems incredi- 
ble to me that any woman can attach degrading 
associations to such a solemnity. But perhaps 
this is one consequence of the neglect of a duty 
which, if observed conscientiously, would forever 
banish the false modesty and the gross ideas 
which are prevalent among too many. Until 
Christian women honour themselves and glorify 
their own condition in the use of this most be- 
coming office, it cannot be expected that such 
vices will cease to prevail. The remedy is with 
yourselves. Let the Church's daughters do in 
all things as the Bride of Christ teaches them 
to do, and they will find a rich reward in the 



68 Moral Reforms. 

blessed effects that will follow in the household 
and in the community. 



VII. 

Conscience in all Things. 

May I ask you, next, to study much those 
Scriptures which are addressed to women con- 
fessing Christ, and which are your best guide in 
the paths of duty. Be convinced that to know 
your duty is to know, at the same time, the 
secret of your happiness. Any departure from 
this Law brings remorse and sorrow, in the end. 
To be the frivolous followers of Fashion will be 
of little use to you, here or hereafter. Beauty 
soon disappears, and nothing is more hideous 
than Age affecting the follies of Youth. A last- 
ing prosperity attends only those wise women 
who build their own houses, by founding them 
on a rock. 

It is not my purpose, in denouncing the ex- 
travagances of vulgar fashion, to argue against 



Conscience in all Things. 69 

the genuine refinements of the age, or even 
against taste and beauty in costume. " Can a 
maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her at- 
tire ?" Isaac gave Rebecca certain jewels of 
espousal, and the Bride of Christ is figuratively 
adorned in clothing of wrought gold and rai- 
ment of needle-work. There are times and oc- 
casions when wealth is privileged to contribute 
to social arts, and competence and respectability 
are justly expected to cultivate taste and to in- 
dulge it. The Christian matron, however, is 
warned not to make outward things her adorn- 
ing, even if, at a fitting time, she is apparelled 
with cost, and at all times with propriety ; and 
it is made her primary duty so to adorn herself 
with good works that nothing which she wears 
or uses can possibly be that which belongs to 
the needy, to the institutions of the Church, or 
to the Glory of Christ. 

Happy are those noble women who spare 
their husbands the extravagances of mere show, 
and hence have something to give to the claims 
of Christ and his poor ; who embellish their 
homes with taste, but save from the mere ca- 
prices of ostentation what they should expend 



jo Moral Reforms. 

in works of Faith' and Charity, and in laying up 
treasures for Heaven. 

The excessive costliness of much that is worn 
and used in these days is not merely to be cen- 
sured on the score of good taste, as marking re- 
cently acquired wealth, and a low social educa- 
tion ; but, on the score of Morals, also, as very 
often exceeding what the purse can justify, and 
so tending to poverty and crime. To advertise 
one's purse, in this manner, is conceded to be 
ill-bred : but, surely it is much worse to make a 
false show, or to contribute to the delusive idea 
that riches, without character, are worthy of re- 
spect : whereas, it is all important that woman- 
hood should maintain the great principle that 
Christian virtue and true benevolence are the 
indispensable qualities of woman's respecta- 
bility. 



VIII. 

Minor Proprieties. 
St. Paul, writing by the Holy Spirit, has given 



Minor Proprieties. Ji 

very minute directions as to womanly proprie- 
ties, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, as 
in other places. I beg that as Christian women, 
you will teach them to your daughters. 

In Confirmation, there is a general departure 
from the rule of the Apostle that women should 
not be uncovered in public worship. The old 
custom requiring a plain veil, or cap, to be worn 
at such times, would be according to God's Law, 
and hence I wish it were restored: but, if con- 
venience and long usage, in this one exceptional 
instance, be regarded as justifying a momentary 
suspension of the law (as the law of the Sab- 
bath had its exceptions, and also the eating of 
the shewbread by the Laity), then let it be un- 
derstood that the Gospel requires, at all other 
times, that as men should be uncovered in wor- 
ship, so also women should be covered. This 
is the Scriptural Law of all public worship, and 
it should not be disregarded in church-choirs, 
and at weddings. Who would tolerate, in the 
other sex, a like disregard of the law that men 
should uncover the head ? This was a Christian 
precept, reversing the rule of Jewish* worship. 
But, the Law as to the women rests on an ap- 



72 Moral Reforms. 

peal to their native modesty, as well as on an v 
Apostolic precept. " Judge in yourselves," says 
the Scripture, " is it comely that a woman pray 
unto God, uncovered ? " " Every woman that 
prayeth with her head uncovered, dishonoureth 
her head." It was by these rules that the mod- 
esty of Christian women was made a part of 
their religion : and out of these simple laws of 

■a 

the Holy Ghost, have grown alike the freedom 
with which Christian women move in society, 
and the delicate self-respect which so elevates 
them above the condition of their sex in Mo- 
hammedan and other heathen countries, and 
which secures them from insult, even in public 
places, and almost when exposed to the gaze of 
the vilest of men. 

I have touched upon this point to remind you 
that all the rules of Holy Scripture have moral 
bearings and grand purposes, even when they 
seem to be minute and unimportant in them- 
selves. 



Practical Matters. ' 73 



IX. 

Practical Matters. 

But, in closing this address, let me now ask 
your attention to two or three great practical 
matters, by which a wise woman may not only 
" build her own house," but the house of the 
Lord also. I have spoken of education ; I call 
upon you to aid me, and to aid your pastors, 
in the establishment of truly Christian Schools, 
in which your children may find that training 
which is their birth-right and their inheritance 
— the training to which I have referred already, 
as the surest dependence for time and eternity, 
the Blessed Word of God, and the Book of 
Common Prayer. 

Remember Lois and Eunice, and do not fail 
to instruct your children in the catechism and in 
the Scriptures, yourselves, personally. It is a 
great thing for a child to associate such teach- 
ings with a mothers voice. That voice will 
sound in his ear all through life. As a foolish 



74 Moral Reforms. 

and wicked mother's counsel haunts the soul of 
her child as long as he lives, so the good mother 
is a guardian angel, especially to the son, and 
the remembrance of her recalls him even from 
a prodigal's exile to his father's house. 

I beg you to look well to the formation of 
your Family Libraries. Every house should 
be supplied with books, and with none but the 
best books. Reject the frivolous and licentious 
magazines and periodicals of the day, and choose 
only those which are pure and of wholesome 
moral and religious character. Many children's 
books abound in maxims the most pernicious 
and immoral. These poison the very fountains 
of moral life, and are worse than the noisome 
pestilence. , 

I ask you to encourage the careful and punc- 
tual attendance of your households on week-day 
services, so far as you may have it in your 
power to do so, and to avoid making other en- 
gagements for evenings when services may be 
appointed in your parish churches. I entreat 
you to see to it that Family Prayer be not neg- 
lected in your households, but that every day 
God's Holy Word is read and His blessed 
Name invoked under your roof. 



Practical Matters. 75 

I urge you to encourage your most promising 
sons to be students and scholars, so to supply the 
land with its learned men ; and more especially 
to call on such of them as may seem best suited 
for it to reflect on the claims of Christ for their 
service in the Ministry of the Blessed Gospel. 

Finally, I urge you often to seek the closet 
for holy communion with God, so to prepare 
yourselves for all the duties and responsibilities 
of your calling as Christian Women — wives, 
mothers, and " handmaids of the Lord." Be- 
hold how glorious your sphere, and how degrad- 
ing the ideas of those who would invade it and 
drag you out of it, into gross and revolting pub- 
licity. 

With all the gratitude of one who owes to a 
Christian mother lessons of life and duty more 
precious than any worldly fortune, and with 
all the reverence for the sex which can be in- 
spired by such gratitude, I commend these 
thoughts to your prayerful consideration ; and 
am, at once, your brother in Christ, and, in the 
Episcopate, your father in God. 

See-House, Buffalo, January 27, 1868. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



The subjects already treated requiring some further illus- 
tration, I have here grouped my remarks into chapters, 
instead of encumbering the pages with foot-notes. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Deaconesses. 

The order of Deaconesses having been often 
referred to in the foregoing remarks, it may be 
very reasonably inquired what plan or principle 
should be recognized in its restoration. 

I reply, I am able to give the detailed ac- 
count which follows. In January, 1864, while 
a presbyter of the Diocese of New York, I was 
called upon by my bishop (Dr. Potter), to con- 
sider, as one of a committee, the following 
questions which he proposed to us, for counsel : 

Questions in regard to a Sisterhood on which the Bishop 
desires the opinion of his Presbyters : 

1. Is it well for him to recognize a Sisterhood, and to 
stand in some fixed relation tQ it? 



80 Moral Reforms. 

2. If so, what should that relation be? 

3. Should there be different classes : such as full sisters, 
probationers, and associates ? 

4. With what engagements should a woman enter the 
Sisterhood ? 

5. Should the age be beyond a given limit ? and what? 

6. As to form and circumstances of initiation — how far 
a religious solemnity, and how far public ? 

7. As to a uniform habit? 

8. How shall the first Sister be appointed, and for what 
term ? 

9. Shall there be a Rector between the Sisters and the 
Bishop ? 

10. Of what age should he be, and how appointed? 

1 1 . Shall the Sisterhood be a general Institution, inde- 
pendent of the House of Mercy, and incorporated ? 

12. How shall rules and a form of initiation be drawn up ? 

13. I would suggest that the committee undertake this 
when the other matters have been disposed of. 

14. Can you suggest a na7ne for the Sisterhood? 

15. And as to the function of a Sister, is the term Dea- 
coness the right and expedient one to use ? 

Along with these questions I send sundry papers, which 
please preserve carefully, and return to me. Praying God 
to guide and prosper your deliberations. 

These questions were all very carefully con- 
sidered and debated by the clergy to whom 
they were confided ; and, as the result, we were 
able to unite in the following report, which fully 
embodies all my view.s on the subject. The 



Deaconesses. 8 1 

report was addressed, of course, to our vener- 
able Diocesan. 



The Report to the Bishop of Neiv York* 

Your communication having been read, it 
was resolved to take up the questions in order 
to discuss each one separately, and then to 
agree upon a report, containing, in a series, our 
answers to each point presented. 

The discussion had not gone far, however, 
before it was perceived that a subject of great 
width was opening upon us ; and as our delib- 
erations proceeded, it became evident to all 
that we could not adhere to the course which we 
had originally proposed to pursue. For the 
questions seemed to refer to a special case with 
the exception of No. i and No. 15, which ap- 
peared to bear upon the general subject of 
Woman's Work in the Church of Christ. It 
was found that every attempt to decide upon a 
concrete topic led to a discussion of abstract 
principles, and with such logical certainty that 

a The committee consisted of the Rev'd Drs. Tuttle, Peters and Dix, 
with the present bishops of Long Island and Western New York. 



82 Moral Reforms. 

the decision of any single point required a full 
understanding upon the bearings of the whole 
question, and could only be satisfactorily rend- 
ered by reference to such a general view. Un- 
certain as to your wishes, we were in doubt 
how to proceed, not knowing whether you in- 
tended that we should go beyond the line 
marked out for us in your communication. But 
since it was found impossible to come to any 
agreement on particulars, until we had first 
reached entire unanimity on the general ques- 
tion, we decided to ask your indulgence, and take 
the only course which seemed practicable. We 
have not been able in making our report, to 
follow your queries in the order in which they 
were* put ; and yet it is believed that in this, 
our reply, no one of them has been overlooked, 
and that an answer to each will appear. 

The Committee found themselves engaged 
about two distinct yet connected subjects. The 
first was that of the work of Devout Women 
in the Church ; the second was that of Religi- 
ous Houses in which such persons should reside 
together under rule. It is therefore proposed, 
with your permission, to treat of these sub- 



Deaconesses. 83 

jects, as briefly as may be consistent with the 
design of placing our Bishop in possession of 
our views on each of them. 

It is evident, as well from the Holy Scrip- 
tures as from the records of the Primitive 
Church, that, from the very first, women were 
admitted to the function of special works and 
labours of love for the glory of God and for the 
good of the bodies and souls of their fellow- 
creatures ; that they were enrolled and organ- 
ized for such works ; that peculiar obligations 
were regarded as binding them while so en- 
gaged : and that they stood in- a definite offi- 
cial relation to the Church, from the moment 
of their entering upon those duties and assum- 
ing those obligations. Thus we read of the 
" Deaconess " as having a recognized position 
among the faithful ; of a " number " into which 
none should be admitted but with restrictions 
as to age and character ; of a life of devotion 
described expressively by St Paul as involving 
the serving God by continuing " in supplica- 
tions and prayers night and day ; " of a spirit- 
ual relationship to Christ so incompatible with 
worldly ties that he prohibits younger women 



84 Moral Reforms. 

from entering into it lest, by marriage, they 
should " wax wanton against Christ," and " cast 
off their first faith," thereby incurring krima, or, 
(to drop the harsher term used by our transla- 
tors,) condemnation. These Scripture expres- 
sions involve the idea of a life of self-dedication 
which must have been different from the life of 
the ordinary Christian family ; of a life which 
must have been passed under rule, and from 
which, after it had once been entered upon, no 
one could with safety or honour retire. It is un- 
necessary to enter upon a discussion of the re- 
cords of the Early Church ; for no one familiar 
with them is ignorant that these ideas were 
held as Scriptural and Apostolic, by the Chris- 
tians of the First Age ; that the iife of which 
we are speaking was recognized, embraced, and 
held in high honour in those, the purest days of 
the Church's history ; and that full approval 
and sanction were accorded it, as well by the 
authorities ecclesiastical as by the mind of the 
faithful in general. 

The Commitee are, therefore, united in the 
opinion, that great advantages would flow from 
the recovery of those ideas, and from their ap- 



Deaconesses. 85 

plication towards results, under a practical form 
such as should command the confidence of our 
people. They feel that there is no sufficient 
reason why the Church of Rome should con- 
tinue to enjoy, as though by a recognized mo- 
nopoly, the advantages and the credit resulting 
from association and concentration in this kind 
of work. Regarding the system of mediaeval 
nunneries as a late and evil development from 
the Primitive System, they would recommend a 
return to the way of the first days of the 
Church, and an attempt to regain, by resort to 
a Scriptural and Apostolic platform, and by the 
revival of a Scriptural and Apostolic office, the 
power which resides in truly primitive institu- 
tions. 

We find in the Holy Scripture the word 
" Deaconess." It is evidently the name of 
what may be called an Order; it is the ap- 
pellation of a certain office, known, recognized, 
and held in esteem in the earliest period of 
Christianity. That name may be taken as a 
symbolic term ; so that, in the use of it, the fact 
is shown and set prominently forward, that they 
who would revive the Order formerly so desig- 






86 Moral Reforms. 

nated, have in their minds a good and profit- 
able thing, approved by the first and highest 
authority, and not a comparatively recent and 
dangerous institution, the product of a deteri- 
orated type of religion. This term, in fact, 
seems to possess a marked fitness, in respect to 
the historical position of the system which it de- 
notes. For it is the name of an office marked 
by a special designation to its exercise ; recog- 
nized by authority ; comprehending all works 
of mercy, spiritual as well as corporal, among 
its objects ; assumed only by permission and 
after probation ; and regarded as involving a 
final and life-longf dedication to the service of 
the Divine Master. At the same time it is 
pure of the defilements wjiich other offices have 
contracted ; it is not associated with supersti- 
tions foreign to the spirit of the Gospel ; and it 
includes no idea of relationship to Roman 
errours, whether of doctrine or practice. 

Your committee would, therefore, recommend 
that the Order and Office of a Deaconess in 
the "Church of Christ should be restored among 
us ; as one which is both Scriptural and primi- 
tive in its origin and design ; and as one which 






Deaconesses. 8 7 

will afford, to devout women who may be ad- 
mitted thereto, the means and opportunities of 
systematic and effective work in the Household 
of Faith. 

They would further suggest, with reference 
to the duties of such Deaconesses, the age at 
which they should be admitted to that good de- 
gree, and the other qualifications requisite in 
applicants, such considerations as the following : 

1. It should be understood, that the work 
of a Deaconess should not be limited, but 
that it be held to include all the corporal and 
spiritual works of mercy which a woman may 
perform ; and that the idea, as well of a con- 
templative life of prayer and devotion, as of an 
active life of manual labour or otherwise, should 
be included in the full description of the office. 
But especially it should be held to have refer- 
ence to the care of the sick and needy, and to 
the work of educating the young. 

2. It is considered that no woman should 
be admitted as a Deaconess until she be at 
least forty years of age, nor until she have had 
a probation sufficient to remove all doubt from 
her own mind, and from that of her advisers, 



88 Moral Reforms. 

that she is duly qualified for that work, and has, 
so far as can be judged, a true vocation to the 
same. If the time of her probation have been 
passed in a Religious House, (as hereinafter 
explained), it is further considered that such 
time of probation should in no case be less than 
ten years in extent. 

3. It should be, also, understood that, while 
no previous engagement or vow binds the pro- 
bationer to enter that Order, yet that when, 
after full consideration, she shall have been ad- 
mitted thereto, the step is to be a final step, and 
the dedication of herself to those duties must 
be, in the full purpose and intent of the candi- 
date, unqualified and absolute. 

These conclusions having been reached, the 
attention of your Committee was next directed 
to the manner in which persons would probably 
be prepared and qualified for the high position 
and responsibilities which have been described. 
Here the question of Sisterhoods was encoun- 
tered, in its logical order. For, if devout women 
were moved to desire that higher way of life, 
and yet could not embrace it without due pro- 
bation, it seemed probable that the simplest 



Deaconesses. 89 

and most acceptable mode of making prepara- 
tion would be, to form themselves into commu- 
nities or households, as a step towards their 
final object. Existing associations might also 
be continued with that end in view. 

Therefore your Committee would, in addition 
to the suggestions already offered on the sub- 
ject of Deaconesses, respectfully make the fol- 
lowing recommendations on the subject of 
Sisterhoods : 

1. That the Bishop should recognize the 
principle of the association of devout women 
in organizations to be known as Sisterhoods, 
with a view to the fulfilment of such works, or 
any of them, as may prepare them for the office 
of Deaconess in the Church of Christ. 

2. That such Sisterhoods should be incor- 
porated if it be found expedient or necessary. 

3. That such Sisterhoods should include 
different classes, to wit : Sisters, properly so 
called, and Probationers ; the Sisters being in 
probation for the Order of Deaconesses, and 
the Probationers being in probation for the Sis- 
terhood : that, in future time, Deaconesses 
should also be united in such association with 



90 Moral Reforms. 

the Sisters and Probationers ; and that it should 
be permitted to have associates, not members of 
the Religious House, but living with their own 
families, and indirectly lending aid to its objects. 

4. That no person should be admitted as a 
Sister, who is under the age of twenty-five years. 

5. That no vows should bind the members 
of such Sisterhoods during their term of proba- 
tion, but that they should be at liberty to with- 
draw at any time previous to their being 
admitted Deaconesses. 

6. That the Bishop should stand in a defi- 
nite official relation, not merely to the J Sister- 
hoods in general, but also to each one in 
particular ; that he should be legally visitor of 
each Sisterhood, and should have an Episcopal 
check on their proceedings at any time and in 
all matters. 

7. That all forms of initiation, as well to 
Sisterhoods as to the Order of Deaconesses, and 
all religious services other than those of the Book 
of Common Prayer, which may be used at such 
initiation, or at other times by them in public, 
should be drawn up by the Bishop, or by some 
person appointed by him for that purpose. 



Deaconesses. 9 1 

8. That all rules for the conduct and inter- 
nal management of the said Religious Houses 
should be draughted by the members thereof, 
subject to the Bishop's approval. 

9. That the Sisterhoods may be designated 
by proper and suitable names, as in the case of 
parish churches ; but that the names of Sister- 
hoods should be confined to such as may be 
found in Holy Scripture and in Primitive 
Church History ; and that the members of each 
Sisterhood may select the name by which it 
shall be called and known. 

10. That the members of the Sisterhoods 
wear a suitable and uniform habit. 

11. That in selecting a Superior, or First 
Sister, or Head of the Household, the Sisters 
should send to the Bishop one or more names, 
not to exceed three in number, and that the 
Bishop should make a selection from among 
those names ; and that the person so selected 
should fill the office for a term not less than 
three years in duration, nor more than seven. 

12. That there should be attached to each 
Sisterhood, a clergyman, to be called and known 
as the Warden or Chaplain, or by some appro- 



92 Moral Reforms. 

priate .title of that description ; that he be 
appointed by the Bishop ; and, although, for 
obvious reasons, no rule can be laid down as 
to the age of the person so appointed, yet the 
Committee would recommend that he be not 
less than forty years old. 

Your Committee now conclude their Report, 
with the hope that their mode of presenting 
their replies to the questions proposed by the 
Bishop may not be regarded by him as officious, 
and with the belief that every point covered 
by those questions will be found to have been 
answered. 

Such was our Report. It should be added 
that our views were not purely theoretical. My 
own were formed upon some practical observa- 
tions of the Order of Deaconesses as it has for 
several years existed in the Diocese of Mary- 
land. Many years have passed since the great 
importance of Sisterhoods began to be recog- 
nized in England, under impressions- produced 
by the writings of the late Mr. Southey. 



The Education of Conscience. 93 



II. 

The Education of Conscience. 

It is a blessed thing that our ancient Church 
refuses to give to her children a conscience- 
keeper, and leaves to every one, of full age, 
the solemn responsibility of studying the Scrip- 
tures and conforming himself to that Holy Law. 
It is by this self-exercise, of which St. Paul 
speaks, that spiritual growth and health are 
developed ; and experiments designed to relieve 
the individual conscience of this work, whether 
in the Romish Confessional, or in the minute 
rules of divers sects, have always failed to pro- 
mote a genuine morality. 

In her Catechetical Instructions, however, by 
Canons, by Pastoral Letters, and by the duty 
laid on her bishops to address their dioceses on 
matters of practical piety, the Church provides 
for the enlightment of conscience and for the 
general guidance of the judgment. Such has 
been the rule of the Catholic and Apostolic 
5* 



94 Moral Reforms. 

Church from the beginning. Now among "the 
pomps and vanities" renounced at baptism, were 
anciently understood among other things, theat- 
rical exhibitions and " all promiscuous and las- 
civious dancing of men and women together. " a 
I must leave it to Christian Mothers to say 
whether certain modern dances are not justly 
accused of such a character. Popular satire is 
everywhere busy in crying shame upon some of 
them. " The Girl of the Period " has become 
a by-word. The nudity and lewd familiarities, 
the drinking and late hours of modern balls, 
are denounced in popular songs and caricatures ; 
yet, constantly, I am told, as I go on my Epis- 
copal journeys, that these things are patronized, 
as well as tolerated, by Christians of all names, 
and by many Communicants of the Church. 
Indeed, I am often asked what it is that Chris- 
tians " renounce " under the name of pomps 
and vanities, and in what the life of Communi- 
cants is supposed to differ from that of the 
votaries of pleasure and worldly living. In 
short, things have come to such a pass, that I 
must call attention to these scandals, and trust 

a See Bingham's Antiquities, Book XVI., chap, xii., 15. 



The Education of Conscience. 95 

in the Holy Ghost and the power of con- 
science, to bring about the remedy, especially 
by the wholesome operation of our annual 
Lenten discipline, retirement, meditation and 
prayer. 

Let nobody suppose that the Church's stand- 
ard of morals is lower in these respects than 
that of other Christians. St. Ambrose power- 
fully rebuked the immodest dances of his day, 
specifying many of the shameful character- 
istics which have reappeared in these times. 
" St. Chrysostom," says Bingham, " has abund- 
ance to the same purpose ;" and nobody can 
read Jeremy Taylor's " Holy Living and 
Dying," without feeling that " the sober, right- 
eous and gqdly life," for which we continually 
pray, implies far more than popular religion is 
wont to enjoin. 

The late Bishop Meade, of Virginia, in his 
valuable essay on " Baptismal Vows," reminds us 
that it is neither Puritan nor Methodist, but the 
extreme high-churchman, Bishop Collier, who 
has laid down the law most stringently concern- 
ing theatrical entertainments. I refer you on 
that subject to Bishop Meade's excellent re- 



g6 Moral Reforms. 

marks, only calling your attention to the lan- 
guage of our own House of Bishops in a Pas- 
toral Letter of fifty years since. It must be 
remembered that things which the Police of 
that day would not have tolerated are now, 
everywhere, common in theatres ; yet they 
say : 

" The House of Bishops, solicitious for the preservation 
of the purity of the Church, and the piety of its members, 
are induced to impress upon the Clergy the important duty, 
with a discreet but earnest zeal, of warning the people of 
their respective cures, of the danger of an indulgence 2 in 
those worldly pleasures, which may tend to withdraw the af- 
fections from spiritual things. And especially on the subject 
of gaming, of amusements involving cruelty to the brute 
creation, and of theatrical representations, to which some 
peculiar circumstances have called their attention : they do 
not hesitate to express their unanimous opinion that these 
amusements, as well from their licentious tendency as from 
the strong temptations to vice which they afford, ought not 
to be frequented. And the Bishops cannot refrain from ex- 
pressing their deep regret at the information that, in some 
of our large cities, so little respect is paid to the feelings of 
the members of the Church, that theatrical representations 
are fixed for the evenings* of her most solemn festivals."* 

Let me only add, that the diocese of Mary- 
land, always foremost under its great bishop, 

a House of Bishops, May 27, 1S17. 



The Education of Conscience. 97 

and by its eminent lay-delegates, in the councils 
of our Church, has legislated on this subject as 
follows: "Canon xviii. Attendance upon the- 
atrical exhibitons, horse-races and other vain 
and light amusements, being considered inconsist- 
ent with the Christian character, it is hereby 
declared the duty of members of this Church 
carefully to abstain from encouraging them by 
their presence." 

The late Bishop Potter, of Pennsylvania, in 
his essay on " the drinking usages of society," 
has fully discussed and rebuked another form of 
vice, and to his pages I would refer the reader 
for wholesome admonitions on that subject. If 
the bishop has taken grounds, which, in the 
judgment of some, are too austere, let us remem- 
ber that a reformer, to use a homely illustration, 
is like the engine that goes, with mighty im- 
pulse, in advance of the railway carriages, be- 
cause it has to drag thousands after it, who 
would make no progress at all if left to their 
own means of locomotion. 

So then our Church, gives only general di- 
rections, and within these limits leaves the rest 
to every man's conscience in the fear of God. 



98 Moral Reforms. 

She instructs her children by the largest reading 
of God's word, and leaves the rest just where 
the Apostle does when he says : " Finally, 
brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatso- 
ever things are honest, whatsoever things are 
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be 
any praise, think on these things!' 



III. 

Direction. 

A brilliant French writer has produced a 
series of novels, of which Le M audit (" Under 
the Ban ") was the first, to illustrate the actual 
condition of Romanism in France. a In La Re- 
ligieuse he unveils the wretched results of Con- 
vent Education ; concerning which the learned 
Abbe Guettee bears a testimony which ought to 
sink into the hearts of those American parents 

a The series, in French, may be had of T. W. Christern, importer, 
77 University Place, New York. 



Direction. 99 

who foolishly give up their children to this in- 
sidious system of corruption as it now exists in 
America. With reference to the late exposure 
of Convent Life in England, by the famous 
Saurin case at Westminster Hall, he says : 
" The developments which shocked the English, 
in that trial, are the most ordinary matters in 
all convents, but there are much graver secrets 
than these. No need to go back to the middle 
ages for veritable victims, nor for immoralities 
of all sorts. They deny these excesses, it is 
true, with an impudence which they who are 
not in a condition to know about them can 
hardly- credit. But they who do know all about 
it find in such impudence only another proof of 
the profound immorality which prevails in Con- 
vents. All is covered up, indeed, under a mys- 
tic formalism, which, at first, may deceive. 
Those who know these houses, called religious, 
more intimately cannot be so imposed upon. It 
is customary to praise them as seats of angelic 
life. But, angels, indeed ! Which sort of an- 
gels, for there are two kinds ? The English have 
found out a little, but they will learn much more 
if Convents are to be multiplied among them." 



ioo Moral Reforms. 

So speaks the Abbe, who knows all about 
French Convents. But the author of Le Mau- 
dil, whoever he may be, is another Abbe, equally 
well informed, and his work La Religieuse should 
be read in connection with another which fol- 
lowed it, Le Confesseur. In this truly vivid 
picture of French Life, the author shows that 
the Confessional is an entire failure, and ought 
to be abolished; that it nowhere exists according 
to its theory, as a Sacrament of penitence ; and, 
that the Jesuits and Dominicans, who aspire to 
be the Directors of " fashionable ladies," have a 
thorough contempt for it. They decline to act 
as confessors, and only accept the care of souls 
as Directors] that is to say, as assuming the 
whole control of a lady s conscience, deposing her 
husband as well as her own personality, and 
taking her whole household, even to the kitchen 
and the bed-chamber, under their own rule. 
Such is the system of Jesuit dominion, which 
begets the utmost hatred of all religion in the 
hearts of fathers and husbands, and drives them 
into infidelity. This is the system which the 
Jesuits are trying to introduce into our country. 
They first gain some terrible secret of a gay 



Moloch Worship. ■ . 101 

woman's history, in the confessional, and then 
hold her, by the chain of her known sins, a slave 
and a victim for life. 

How different the refuge offered to tl\e true 
pentitent in Holy Scripture. " The blood of 
Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." The 
blessed means of grace provided in the Church, 
first cleanse and then restore the true penitent : 
they bid him " go and sin no more :" they place 
him under the care of a pastor, not an inquisitor; 
and they give him wisdom and strength to "ex- 
ercise himself" and to direct his own conscience 
by God's word, as one who must answer for 
himself before God. 



IV. 

Moloch Worship. 

A physician of highly respectable position, 
has lately sent me several of his own contribu- 
tions to one of our newspapers, from which I 
extract the following paragraphs : 

"It is related that when the Huguenot Mother, Perrotine 



102 . Moral Reforms. 

Massy, and her two daughters were burned at the stake, one 
of the latter was delivered of a child in the very midst of the 
fiery furnace, which rolled out of it alive and almost un- 
scathed. A bystander picked up the child, thus miracu- 
lously saved, but was ordered by the bailiff, Helier Gosselin, 
to throw it back into the flames that it might be consumed 
with its heretic mother." 

This happened in the isle of Guernsey, under 
Queen Mary the Bloody. 

" One cannot read such a recital as this without a shud- 
der of horror ; it outrages every sympathy and sensibility of 
our nature, and we feel like doubting, almost, its veracity. 
Judging of a Helier Gosselin after our own standard of vir- 
tue, we are compelled to the belief that either himself and 
the class to which he belonged were exceptional beings of 
different moral mould from the mass of humanity, or else 
that human nature must have settled into a sad state of de- 
generacy in the times of Mary Tudor, from which, happily, 
it has since elevated itself. 

" But is this conclusion correct ? What if we state that to- 
day, — in our very midst, — in the bosom of the Church, 
within those circles of society where the tenderer attributes 
of human sympathy are most cherished and cultivated; 
within the closer and dearer limits of the family and the fire- 
side, crimes are committed, daily and hourly, that rival the 
savage brutality of Gosselin ! 

" Gosselin did not believe that he was committing a crime ; 
on the contrary, he no doubt supposed that he was fulfilling 
a stern religious duty, so much the more meritorious as it 
was costly to his moral sentiments." 



Moloch Worship. 103 

After arguing that no such excuse can be 
found for another class of child-murderers, the 
writer adds : 

" The terrible fact exists, the bloody work goes on day by 
day, the cruel actors in it are taken by the hand, public con- 
science sleeps, the law looks blandly on, and society felici- 
tates itself upon its moral progress and high religious stand- 
ard. 

" Then the crime must be so skillfully covered up that it 
never sees the light; that old and well-established law of 
events which forces crime to the surface where it must be 
discovered, has ceased to act ! 

" Wrong again. No general fact is better or more univer- 
sally known than that of the existence of this crime ; there 
are few members % of any community who could not point the 
finger at some one who is guilty of it ; proposals and means 
to its commission are boldly advertised throughout the 
country ; knowledge of these means are retailed from one to 
another in every grade of society ; the guilty even boast of 
their guilt, and laugh at the timid fears of those whose con- 
sciences still feebly restrain them from yielding to these ex- 
amples of evil. 

" It will have been divined what crime is alluded to ; there 
is but one .that could exist under such conditions, and that 
is murder of the unborn human offspring — willful destruc- 
tion of the existence created by God for an undying soul • a 
flying in the face of the Creator by despatching to Him, un- 
timely, a witness that shall live to confront the murderer in 
the day of judgment. 

" Murder is always murder, whether it consist in the des- 
truction of the apparently formless ovum, or the full grown 



104 Moral Reforms. 

man. In either instance the organic animal life, concurrent 
with the spiritual, has been arrested in its progress ; a spe- 
cific creation, endowed with all its attributes of immortal as 
well as mortal existence has been destroyed, so far as it is 
destructible, and the perpetrator of the deed has taken upon 
himself the responsibility of sending a soul back to God who 
gave it. There is a social difference ; society and human 
relationships miss the murdered child or man, and do not 
miss the unborn child which has never yet taken its place 
among them,. but that is all; there is no difference in the 
accountability to God for the destruction of a work which 
is His from the beginning. The Psalmist says : 

" My bones are not hid from thee, though I be made secretly, and 
fashioned beneath in the earth. 

"Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in thy 
book were all my members written; ^ 

' ' Which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there was none of 
them."- — Ps. cxxxix. 

" If then this crime is so prevalent, so widely known, 
and so horrible and bloody in its character, how does it come 
about that it should be tolerated and tacitly ignored in a civi- 
lized and Christian community? Wherein consists the fatal 
errour that renders either its commisson or toleration possi- 
ble in a land where lesser crimes are so vigorously frowned 
down and punished? 

" The basis, the ultimate element of this error lies, as 
the present writer believes, in a mistaken popular notion 
that denies both spiritual and animal life to the foetus, at 
least up to quite an advanced period of gestation. This 
notion has governed and does govern, even now, the laws 
of the land, as well as popular opinion. It seems strange 
that the simple thought that the germ not interfered with 



Moloch Worship. 105 

would in time become a man, should not have carried with 
it a deeper sense of the importance of that germ and of 
its intimate relations with spiritual life. Suffice it to say 
here, that no physiologist doubts at the present day, that the 
relations of the ovum an instant old to the immortal life of 
a newly created soul, are the same as those of a man who 
has reached the allotted three-score-years-and-ten, so far as 
the facts of the existence and individuality of that soul are 
concerned. 

" But the fallacy, the opposite to this doctrine, naturally 
carries with it the popular impression that to destroy the 
unformed child, is a mere peccadillo, the furthest possible 
removed from such a terrible crime as murder. Add to this 
facility for the accomplishment of such a design; familiarity, 
which always softens the hideous aspect of crime; the force 
of example; laxity of the law; moral carelessnes, an educating 
of the mind, so to speak, to the admission of such guilty deeds as a 
sort of matter of course, and we have the state of things which 
actually exists. 

" It is difficult to state how extensively practiced is this 
murderous habit. It would be safe to say, perhaps, that un- 
born generations have been lessened of late nearly one-half 
by criminal interference with the laws of nature/' 

From another journal I extract the following 
alarming statements : 

" The report of Dr. Harris, the Register of Vitaf Statistics 
in New York, speaks volumes and furnishes food for earn- 
est reflection. The returns of births in the city of New 
York, during the six months ending Sept. 30, 1866, show 
5,745 births, of which 868 were children of native parents, 



106 Moral Reforms. 

3,246 were of foreign parentage, 398 had foreign fathers 
only, 339 had foreign mothers only, and the parentage of 
894 was not stated. This shows a total of 3,983 children 
of foreign parentage born during that period, while only 868 
full-blooded natives were ushered into this world. The 
Doctor asserts that the returns are manifestly incorrect, but 
remarks that the tables show a decided preponderance of 
children of foreign parentage. In Brooklyn, 1,991 births 
were registered; 776 were children of native parents; 807 
of foreign; 213 had foreign fathers; 137 had foreign moth- 
ers, and the parentage of 37 was not stated. This shows 
a total of 1,157 children of foreign parentage born in 
Brooklyn, and as decided a preponderance as in New York. 
The Doctor thus shows how many babies have come into 
the world, and their parentage, but unfortunately the records 
do not show the condition of the parents — if they did, what 
a tale would be told of city life ! Our New York corres- 
pondent recently copied an extract from Dr. Harris's report, 
in which he referred to the crime of child murder, and as- 
serted that the bureau should have returns of from 27,000 
to 30,000 births in New York annually, and half as many in 
Kings Co., that is unless marriage is a farce and child 
murder more frequent than he believed it to be. Accord- 
ing to the best calculation which can be made of the births 
last year we do not believe that the records will show 12,000 
in New York, and yet the Doctor insists that by the laws 
of social progress there should have been at least 27,000. 
If these *figures be correct what has become of the absent 
15,000 babes? The still-births will perhaps number 2,000, 
leaving 13,000 to be accounted for. The great question is 
where have they gone to ? The Doctor's figures may be 
exaggerated, but diminish them as we may we cannot escape 
the fact that thousands of children are sacrificed yearly. 



Moloch Worship. 107 

" It is a subject of common remark that rich people have 
small families ; the middle classes do not overburden them- 
selves with 'olive branches'; but the poorer classes are 
literally ' fruitful and multiplying/ The returns themselves 
show more than four foreign births to one native, and every- 
body knows that the foreigners are to a great extent among 
the poorer classes. The poor do not have children because 
they can better afford them than the rich, but the latter do 
not have them because they consider it unfashionable ; they 
do not care to have the trouble of rearing their offspring * 
and, not only themselves but the less wealthy classes, find 
no difficulty in getting rid of the children during the periods 
of gestation, when such a process may be considered com- 
paratively safe. This is a bold assertion, but one that will 
be borne out by the facts if ever they can be collected. 

" A glance at a morning journal published in New York 
shows no less than thirty advertisements of persons who, 
' for a consideration/ will ' remove obstructions, from what- 
ever cause/ Few of our newspapers are free from these 
advertisements, so that those who l run may read/ 

"Dr. Harris knows that did not the 'oath of Hippocrates' 
forbid, physicians could reveal tales of this crime which 
would startle the community and assist him to account for 
infants, more or less, which his theories say should have 
made their entree into this wicked world every year." 

My late Pastoral calls forth from a Boston 
editor, a very kind notice, which he follows up 
in the following vigorous language : 

" For nearly two years we have been speaking as much 
and as strdngly as we dared, probably more than was accept- 



108 Moral Reforms 

able to our readers, on the dreadful theme. The thought 
of it has been to us literally an infinite and inexpressible 
sorrow; we could not shake it off; it has haunted us like a 
stifling, hideous dream. The crime has at length grown to 
such monstrous proportions, that no human language can suf- 
fice to describe it. Why, all the other sins and horrors of our 
land put together, our recent slavery, our late civil war, and 
all the drunkenness, and even the enormous curse of frauds, 
robberies, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders, which we 
are now going through, — all these rolled into one lump, do 
not equal the mass of shocking and inhuman depravity 
which the American people are guilty of in this one particu- 
lar. Our whole social and domestic life and being are 
suffering and wasting away under the ' deep damnation ' of 
it. Nearly all our walks of fashion, wealth, position, re- 
spectability, and even of piety, or what passes for such, are 
full of it. Our Protestant Churches are cursed, we some- 
times fear, beyond the hope and the possibility of redemp- 
tion, by the horrible impiety of it. 

" Some strange, diabolical visitation seems to have well- 
nigh burnt the conscience all out of our people on this 
point. Even our religion has lost its guarding and protec- 
tive efficacy in this most sacred and most awful province of 
morality, which is indeed the very holy of holies of humanity 
itself. The devoutest members of our Churches, or those 
who seem such, rush into the secret house of life, and turn 
it into a Moloch shrine, without even the slightest twinges 
of compunction or remorse. Protestant Christians of the 
first circles even boast of their sacrifices to that dreadful 
devil, and freely encourage others in the hideous and hellish 
worship. 

" Surely, then, it is high time that the Protestant Clergy 






Moloch Worship. 109 

should cease their eternal wranglings about orthodoxy and 
doctrinal righteousness, and begin to think of those living, 
practical duties and virtues on which the very life of human- 
ity depends. They ought, long before now, to have 
addressed themselves most seri&usly to grappling and strug- 
gling with this monstrous evil. They will have enough to 
do, we can tell them, to preach a conscience into their peo- 
ple in this matter ; for the task is indeed hardly less than 
to ' create a soul under the ribs of death.' If they cannot 
blow and feed into a strong flame the few faint embers of 
moral life that yet live in this behalf, then, most assuredly, 
their candle-stick will soon be removed out of its place ; 
and the sooner the better. Indeed, that the light of reason 
and conscience and religion should have so far gone out, 
under their teachings, in this most vital point, is such a mix- 
ture of crime and blunder as we do not well see how they 
can survive. It almost looks as if not merely one, but all 
the screws were loose in their cause. It is in marriage and 
motherhood that the very life of the whole thing is centered. 
To fail in this is to fail utterly. What saves us here, will 
needs have, and will deserve to have, possession of the ground. 
Without this, our doctrinal virtues, and ' vital pieties ' are 
the starkest shams, and putting faith in them is the steepest 
of heresies. If Protestantism cannot serve us in this behalf, 
then the days of Protestantism are numbered, and it cannot 
hasten too swiftly into its grave." 

I have selected this from a large number 

of similar specimens of journalism, because, 

while it gives such a strong confirmation to my 

own words, it adopts, from beginning to end, 

6 



no Moral Reforms. - 

the Jesuit's hint that Protestantism is to be 
credited with these immoralities. I am no ad- 
mirer of Sectarian Protestantism, for the whole 
Reformation owes its arrest and its apparent de- 
feat, to the divisions of the Reformed and to the 
Sectarian bodies which disfigure and enfeeble 
modern Protestantism. But, I assert that, 
with all their faults, Protestant nations are, 
almost everywhere, comparatively pure, in their 
social life, if they be contrasted with those 
nations in which Romanism is supreme. In a 
word — compare the Northern and Middle States 
of America, with Brazil, with Mexico, with 
Italy, with Spain. We are bad enough, but, 
thank God, the ministers of religion are not 
our leaders in shameless vice ; they do not 
live in lewdness ; they do not afford a spectacle 
of every form of sensuality and licentiousness, 
and seduce women and children into the vilest 
forms of life-long captivity to sin. 

That such is the moral condition of many 
Romish countries is too well known to require 
elaborate illustration ; but a public document, 
lately issued by the government of Brazil, 
openly sustains these charges, and asserts that 



The Need of Christian Unity. 1 1 1 

the morals of the people cannot be elevated, 
while their priests afford them an almost uni- 
versal example of dissolute living. a 



V. 

The Need of Christian Unity. 

While I 'thus defend even the inorganic 
religion of my countrymen, from unjust re- 
proach, I cannot but add that the remonstrances 
of the Boston Journalist are a sign of the times. 
This country is becoming impatient of un- 
real, hollow, guerilla forms of religion, which 
cannot be brought to bear, practically, on the 
moral life of the people. It is getting ready 
for almost any change, and in a sort of con- 
tempt for Sectarianism feels like calling in 
Romanism and giving it a trial. Thus, the 
sick ass in the fable calls in the viper to inocu- 
late him, because the dogs have licked his 
sores in vain. What the inorganic piety of 
America requires is the organizing life of the 

a Consult Count de la Hure on Brazil, published in Paris. 



ii2 Moral Reforms. 

historical Catholic Church of Christ. This 
alone can mass its forces, harmonize them, and 
give them concentrated power to contend with 
evil and to propagate good. Let the Metho- 
dists recur to their acknowledged standard, unite 
with the Church of their great founder, John 
Wesley, share with us in a genuine Episcopate, 
a Primitive Liturgic and Ritual System, and 
add an efficient system of Christian nurture 
to their zealous preaching, and the whole land 
will feel the influence of a new spirit. Let me 
quote the words of their own Dr. Coke, as fol- 
lows : "I most cordially wish for a re-union 
of the Protestant Episcopal and the Methodist 
Churches in these States. The object is of 
vast magnitude. . . . How great would be 
the strength of our Church, (will you give me 
leave to call it so ? I mean the Protestant 
Episcopal) if the two sticks were made one ? 
How can this be done ? The magnitude of 
the object would justify considerable sacrifices." 
So wrote one of the founders of American 
Methodism in 1791, to Bishop Seabury, of 
Connecticut. Let this spirit be revived, and 
America will be, in due time, rescued from the 



The Need of Christian Unity. 1 1 3 

threatening evils of Infidelity and Romanism, 
by the natural process of a reunion between 
its historic and its popular forms of faith. 

I call ours the historic Church, for let me 
remind the pious descendants of the New En- 
gland pilgrims, that a great proportion of the 
founders of Massachusetts were presbyters in 
the orders of the Church of England, and that 
most of those things to which they objected, in 
the Church of England, have passed away, or 
have been re-adopted by descendants of the 
Puritans. Let me also remind the Presbyte- 
rians, in their several denominations, that in 
the tract " Moderate Episcopacy," I have de- 
monstrated their historic position to be much 
nearer to " the Episcopal Church " than is com- 
monly supposed ; so that I may well claim that 
ours is the historic Church of America, to which 
the chief of the other systems of the land may, 
naturally, converge, and in which they may 
happily meet, in due time. We must hasten 
slowly of course ; but, let the spirit of a recov- 
ered organic Unity begin at once. If not, then 
Protestantism in our land must run through the 
phases which have destroyed its spirftual life 



H4 Moral Reforms. 

in Europe ; and Jesuitism is destined to a tem- 
porary triumph in America, as in France and 
Germany. No nation of Europe ever offered 
it such facilities as our own Republic ; yet, it 
soon overcame the Protestantism of France, 
regained one-half of Germany and neutralized 
the Reformation in the other half. It is not 
difficult to foresee its progress here — unless 
an Apostolic Church is able to give it the 
organized opposition for which Sectarian Pro- 
testantism has no resources. 



VI. 

Cheap EdiLcation. 

It is the plan of the Romanists to furnish 
cheap education, in order to gather in the chil- 
dren of weak Protestants, who prefer cheap 
poison to food for their children at reasonable 
prices. The Romish priesthood, by bargains 
with politicians, secure the means to make their 
schools cheap, getting enormous grants from 
the Legislatures of our States, and from the 



Cheap Education. 115 

corporations of towns and cities, all of which 
comes out of the purse of the tax -payer. Thus 
it is that Romish convents, abolished by law, 
as public nuisances, in Italy, are established by 
law, in America. 

But, what does this cheap education amount 
to ? Generally, it affords a thin varnish of ac- 
complishments, over a much thinner ground- 
work of real mental culture. Look at the 
women of Italy and Spain ; at the women of 
Mexico and Brazil ! Are these of the charac- 
ter we should prefer for our daughters ? Is it 
not our duty to train up a child in the way 
she should go ? And is this the way ? 

A religion of sensuous and imaginative 
routine, having little or no reference to the 
culture of the intellect and the heart, is that to 
which the plastic and emotional character of 
the young girl is subjected, when she enters 
a convent-school. These schools exist for no 
other purpose than to make proselytes. The 
Sisterhood of " the Sacred Heart," so-called, 
is under the control of the Jesuits, and is their 
instrument for operating on women, more es- 
pecially in Protestant countries. Whoever 



1 1 6 Moral Reforms. 

sends his daughter to such a school, puts a 
dove into the coils of a serpent. More than 
one true story could I tell of the fatal conse- 
quences of such cheap education. But, if pa- 
rents are so weak as to subject their child to 
the peril, who can pity them when they bewail 
their folly ? I have seen parents wringing their 
hands and confessing -that they could better 
bear to see their child in the coffin of an inno- 
cent and holy sleep with Jesus, than living, 
" the skeleton in the house," which a Romish 
convent had made her. Untruthful, bigoted, 
besotted rather, an enemy to her own brothers 
and sisters, forever taunting her parents as 
heretics, and always plotting with her priest 
against the peace of the family, — such was the 
miserable wreck of a sweet young girl which 
they received back from a convent that pro- 
posed cheap education and " no interference 
with the religious principles of the pupils." 

A mere man of the world, Sir Jonah Bar- 
rington, tells us in his gossiping " sketches," 
how he fared in placing his daughters in a 
French convent for cheap education. His 
story is as follows : 



Cheap EdiLcation. 1 1 7 

" The abbess of the convent in question, Madame Cousin, 
was a fine, handsome old nun, as affable and insinuating as 
possible and gained on us, at first sight. She enlarged on 
the great advantages of her system • and showed us long 
galleries of beautiful little bedchambers, together with gar- 
dens overlooking the boulevards and adorned by that inter- 
esting tower wherein Jeanne d ; Arc was so long confined 
previously to her martyrdom. Her table, Madame Cousin 
assured us, was excellent and abundant. 

"I was naturally impressed with an idea that a nun feared 
God at any rate too much to tell twenty direct falsehoods 
and practice twenty deceptions in the course of half an hour, 
for the lucre of fifty Napoleons which she required in ad- 
vance, without the least intention of giving the value of five 
of them ; and, under this impression, I paid down the sum 
demanded, gave up our two children to Madame Cousin's 
motherly tutelage, and returned to the Hotel de France al- 
most in love with the old abbess. 

" On our return to Paris, we received letters from my 
daughters, giving a most flattering account of the convent 
generally, of the excellence of Madame FAbbesse, the plenty 
of good food, the comfort of the bedrooms, and the extraor- 
dinary progress they were making in their several acquire- 
ments. I was hence induced to commence the second 
half-year, also in advance ; when a son-in-law of mine, call- 
ing to see my daughters, requested the eldest to dine with 
him at his hotel, which request was long resisted by the ab- 
bess, and only granted at length with manifest reluctance. 
When arrived at the hotel, the poor girl related a tale of a 
very different description from the foregoing, and as piteous 
as unexpected. Her letters had been dictated to her by a 
priest. I had scarcely arrived at Paris, when my children 
6* 



' 1 1 8 Moral Reforms. 

were separated, turned away from the show bedrooms, and 
not allowed to speak in any language to each other only one 
hour a day, and not a word on Sundays. The eldest was 
urged to turn ' Catholic '; and, above all, they were fed in 
a manner at once so scanty and so bad, that my daughter 
begged hard not to be taken back, but to accompany her 
brother-in-law to Paris. This was conceded ; and when the 
poor child arrived, I saw the necessity of immediately re- 
calling her sister." 

In America, where convents are trying to 
make themselves popular > they are not generally 
so negligent of the bodily comfort of pupils ; 
it is only the soul that they starve. It must be 
remembered that the " Moral Theology " of 
the Romish Church not only permits lying, but 
teaches it as a religious duty, in many instances ; 
not indeed under the name of lying, which they 
always profess to abhor, but by defining a lie 
in such a way as not to give that name to eva- 
sions, reservations, and mental tricks, which in- 
volve perjury as well as deception. It may be 
conceded that some of the Sisters are naturally 
good women, who, if they were left to their own 
consciences, would be truthful. But, every one 
of them is under a director, generally a Jesuit 
confessor, whose directions they must implicitly 



Cheap Education. 1 1 9 

follow, and who can release them from the 
obligations of any promise or even of any oath. 
Such is the moral system of convents. Of 
their practical influences the following is a fair 
specimen. I take it from a repectable Presby- 
terian newspaper, and it gives the history of 
specific cases, which, I am sorry to say, I could 
confirm by similar instances that have fallen 
under my own observation. 

" There is in Rochester an institution, under the control of 
a Romish Sisterhood, called 'the Convent of the Sacred 
Heart.' Many young ladies of nominal 'Protestant' families 
are educated in it, with the stipulation blandly and speci- 
ously made, that their religion shall not in any way be inter- 
fered with. Recently a young Presbyterian, became an 
inmate of the Convent. She became sick, and was returned 
home, temporarily, for medical treatment. Her pastor, in 
an interview with the young lady, gathered the following 
information concerning the management of the ' Sacred 
Heart.' We quote his written statement. 

' Protestant girls as well as Romanist are forbidden to 
attend any religious service, even on Sundays, outside the 
convent. Those whose parents reside in the city are made 
no exception to this rule. They are not allowed to go 
even where their own parents worship. Their only resource 
is the convent chapel.' Miss T. says : 

1. 'I find it very difficult to practice my own religion. 
They do not forbid it, but their rules and regulations render 
it almost impossible. In order to pray in secret, and read 



120 Moral Reforms. 

my Bible by myself, I am obliged daily to disobey the rules. 
No pupil has a room by herself. About thirty young ladies 
lodge in the room where I sleep, and we are barely allowed 
time to undress and get into bed, when a ' sister ' comes 
through to see that all is right. I get up in the dark, after 
she has gone through, and kneel down and pray. I man- 
age the case something in the same way in the morning. 
They seem trying to make us forget our own religion as 
much as possible. For a time I yielded, and gave up my 
Bible and prayer, but lately I have done as I described. 

2. ' Every Sunday they require us to learn a ' Gospel/ 
and furnish us with Romish Testaments for that purpose. 
The girls generally use those Testaments, but last Sunday 
I used my own. and intend to do so hereafter, though they 
do not seem pleased with it. We are required every day, 
from half past eleven to twelve, to listen to a lesson on the 
doctrines of the Romish Church. The Protestants do not 
receive or answer questions, but they are required to put 
away their books, sit around the teacher, and listen respect- 
fully to what she says. Her teaching, lately, has been on 
purgatory, and the distinction between mortal sins and ve- 
nial sins. 

3. 'We are required to attend chapel-services daily. 
We come in with long, black veils thrown over us, and 
moving very slowly. On Sunday we have white veils. It 
seems very solemn ; much like a funeral. On the altar are 
images of the Virgin and St. Joseph, and we are all required 
to ' bow down to them/ We all conform to this regulation. 

1 Since Lent came in, seven pictures have hung on each 
side of the chapel, and in coming in we are expected to 
kneel before each one in turn on our way to the altar while 
they pray to the Virgin. This is called 'the way of the 



Cheap Education. 121 

* 
Cross.' The prayers are mostly for souls in purgatory. 
Several of us Protestants respectfully declined kneeling to 
the pictures, and were reprimanded for it in the chapel. 
Then we were taken into a room by ourselves, and talked 
to very severely. 

' I have to use great effort to resist these influences. Two 
Presbyterian girls, from Pennsylvania, go through the whole 
ceremony. They have been in the convent some time. 
One of our Protestants has just bought her some beads, and 
has great faith in them. She thought she got a holiday 
not long ago by using them in prayer.' 

I have now borne my testimony, I have 
warned the parents of my own flock, and I can 
do no more. If the fair fields of our country 
are to be given up to this Canada-thistle, it 
shall not be laid to my charge that I gave no 
warning. The evil will grow and spread and 
plant itself every where till it becomes the tor- 
ment of America, as it is of Italy ; and then, 
in some awful conflagration all will be swept 
away ; and years of patient plowing and sowing 
anew will not suffice to restore the land to the 
blessed harvest of a pure Gospel. 



122 Moral Reforms, 



VII. 

Family Reading. 

It is almost in vain that we protest against 
bad books, if we fail to provide our families 
with such as are good. Happily, the evils of 
the unsanctified press are not unbalanced by 
the blessings of a moral and religious one ; 
good books abound, and every pastor should 
know how to give advice as to the selection 
of such books, and as to the supply of jour- 
nals and periodicals for the families of his 
flock. 

I purpose, by God's blessing, to provide a 
small manual of practical hints for reading and 
the formation of libraries. Meantime, I may 
be forgiven for saying that in a little pamphlet, 
" The Church and the Press," I have already 
contributed something of this sort, as a guide 
to Christian parents in directing the reading 
of their families. The Literature of our Church 
is part of the Literature of the Language, and 



Family Reading. 123 

nobody is so inexcusable as a Churchman, if 
he is ignorant of the great authors and divines 
who have glorified the English tongue by their 
immortal works. 

Every family should possess a good well- 
bound large-sized English Bible, with the mar- 
ginal references and renderings. The Family 
Bible should, also, have the Apocrypha. No 
American edition of the Bible is suitable for 
family use. The binding and paper of most of 
these editions are inferior, and the types cannot 
always be trusted. The Commentary is sure 
to be faulty, if intended for popular sale. Be- 
ware of these catch-penny editions of the Holy 
Bible. The solid well-bound and faithful Bi- 
bles, imported by all our Church booksellers, 
are always preferable, and they are well worth 
the trifling additional cost. 

Next to- these, let every household possess 
Bishop Brownell's Family Prayer Book. It is 
invaluable. 

The devotional books published under the 
direction of Bishop Hobart have never been 
excelled for practical usefulness. 

The "Plain Commentary" is an invaluable 



124 Moral Reforms. 

book for households ; and so is "Bishop Home 
on the Psalms." 

The " Life of St. Paul," by Conybeare and 
Howson, is equally precious and full of interest; 
and so is " Smith's Bible Dictionary." But, 
beware of editions of both of these works, mu- 
tilated and sadly disfigured, by incompetent 
persons, trying only to make them popular 
wares for the market. 

To every family in my diocese in which 
there are young children, I commend " Stories 
on the Catechism," written by Mrs. Sherwood. 
I have carefully revised and edited it, a myself, 
in the hope that it may become a book of per- 
manent usefulness in the Church. 



VIII. 

Family Prayers. 

In their late Pastoral the bishops have 
spoken strongly of the necessity of reviving 
Family religion in the form of "a Church in 

B Published by Lippincotts, Philadelphia. 



Family Prayers. 125 

every house," in which the Christian father, 
or householder, is the priest. The neglect of 
this obligation of our religion, which is as old 
as the human family itself, is the source of 
much of the domestic unhappiness which is 
supposed to be characteristic of the times. 

The poor may find it very difficult, except 
on Sundays, to celebrate the offices of Morning 
and Evening Prayer, in their households. No 
such excuse exists for those whom God has 
blest with wealth, and yet it is too often these 
who show themselves most negligent of a duty 
at once delightful in itself, all-important in the 
training of the young, and essential to the true 
prosperity of any family. 

The shorter Family Prayers of the late 
Bishop Wainwright are such as no family 
need excuse themselves from using. They 
would not occupy five minutes, even with a 
short portion of Holy Scripture added as a 
word for the day. The same may be said of 
the excellent forms in the Prayer Book. But 
why should there be time for everything else, 
but prayer ? Why not, especially on Sundays, 
add a chant, or hymn ? Why not, in the thou- 



126 Moral Reforms. 

sands of families where instruments of music 
are used for everything but the praise of God, 
and where Sacred Music might be made, as 
among the old Moravians, a beautiful feature 
of Family Life ? 

We need the intercessions of families for par- 
ishes, and missions, for bishops and pastors, for 
every good work. Let a pastor see to this, 
if he wants living working Christians for his 
parishioners. Insist that all communicants shall 
have prayers in their homes. Many a widow's 
weeds, many an orphan's tears, many a lapse 
from plenty to penury, many a blighted fortune, 
many an instance of juvenile depravity, and 
many an example of affluence unblest with 
real happiness, may be traced to God's curse 
upon a house where " prayer was not wont to 
be made." 



IX. 

The Lord's Day. 
The hallowing of the Lord's Day as part of 



The Lord's Day. 127 

Christian morality, is not sufficiently insisted 
upon. The Fourth Commandment raises to 
a moral obligation, what otherwise might have 
been supposed a Jewish ordinance. It also 
shows that the Institution of a Sabbath is as 
old as creation, and based on the rest of God 
himself. The Sun and Moon were given for 
signs and for seasons. We find Abel offering 
his sacrifice "at the end of days," as the margin 
of our bible renders it ; that is, at the end of 
the week. The Fourth Commandment says 
"Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy." 
It was something to be remembered as already 
established. It is the oldest Institution of 
Religion. 

A real difficulty exists, in some minds, as to 
the applicability of the Fourth Commandment 
to the Christian Sabbath. If we were not 
Churchmen we might, indeed, be led away into 
the errour of those who have abolished it be- 
cause it is not established by a direct precept, 
a plain "Thus saith the Lord." It is thus 
they have abolished the Easter Feast, although 
it has a direct precept in its favour. a 

a 1 Cor. v. 7. 



128 Moral Reforms. 

And it is so they have abolished the Epis- 
copate. The Church's living and unbroken 
testimony to Apostolic Institutions, and to the 
meaning of Scripture, is not recognized by 
such, although Scripture, over and over again, 
makes this the rule of observances ; as when 
St. Paul says, negatively, " we have no such 
customs, neither the Churches of God." The 
customs of the Churches, then, were a rule ; 
and novelties were ruled out by the same ap- 
peal to common usage. 

As Churchmen, then, it is enough for us that 
we follow the Apostolic examples, in observing 
the Lord's Day, and in preserving the Moral 
Law as given by Moses, and re-affirmed by 
Jesus Christ, who proclaimed himself "Lord also 
of the Sabbath." As such he has authority to 
transfer the moral duty to a day more glorious 
and sacred than the old day ; and such a day 
is that of his Resurrection from the Dead. 

Let us note, as to the letter of the Law, 
that we still keep "the Seventh Day;" the 
change is only in the reckoning. We reckon 
from the Resurrection and not from the Re- 
pose after Creation. 



The Lord's Day. 129 

That the Christian Sabbath, which should be 
called the Lord's Day, or Sunday, was observed 
by the Apostles, and sanctified by Christ him- 
self, is evident from the Scriptures. It was 
specially sanctified by the gift of the Holy 
Ghost, on the day of Pentecost, which was the 
Lord's Day, when they were all assembled to 
receive the Comforter ; and Apostolic usage 
is enough for us, who recognize the authority 
of the Apostles to teach us, both by precept 
and example, " to observe all things" which 
they had learned of their Master. 

But for the actual abolition of the Jewish 
Sabbath, as such, and of the observances of 
the Sabbath Day of the old Law, it is said, we 
must have positive Law in addition to all this. 
I think so too, because the Apostles observed 
the Jewish Sabbaths, as long as the Jewish 
Church and nation were permitted to exist. 
But, they did this as Jews, in order, not to 
offend the Jews : while for the Gentile Christ- 
ians they gave a positive Law, dispensing with 
all Jewish institutions, save those only which 
they enumerated, of which the old Sabbath was 
not one. " It seemed good to the Holy Ghost 



130 Moral Reforms. 

and to us," say they, " to lay upon you no 
greater burden than these necessary things!' 
Among the things dismissed as not necessary 
was the Jewish Sabbath. Hence, when certain 
Judaizers were urging the observance of their 
abrogated feasts, St. Paul says, " Let no man 
judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of 
any holy day, or of the new moon, or of the 
Sabbath Days."* All these, he argues, are sha- 
dows of Christ's body and of Christian Institu- 
tions, in his mystical body the Church. Thus, 
then, the purely Mosaic day fell, and was abol- 
ished as such ; but the moral Law remains and 
applies to the day of Christ, the seventh day 
dating after the first Easter. 

On this day we are to do no servile work, 
and we are to give as much rest as possible 
to ourselves, to servants, and even to the 
beasts of the field. But, it is not a day of 
affliction ; it is the very reverse ; a day, when 
all things in a Christian's home should be- 
token the blessings of the Christian Covenant ; 
and also be made a foretaste of an eternal rest 
with God, in heaven. 

a Acts xv. 28, and Colossians ii. 16. 



The Lord's Day. 131 

The following suggestions for sanctifying the 
Lord's Day, were taken from an English work, 
and given to the American Church by Bishop 
Hobart fifty years ago. They deserve to be 
revived. 

The Order of the Duties of the Lord's Day. 

1. Make due preparation for the day before it comes. 
Let your six days labour be so despatched, that it may not 
hinder you. Cast off worldly thoughts, and remember both 
the sins and the abuses of the week past ; and go in good 
time to your rest. 

2. Let your first thoughts be suitable to the day. Re- 
member with joy the resurrection of your Saviour, when you 
awake to the beginning of this holy day ; and let your heart 
be glad to think that another Lord's day has come. 

3. Rise full as early on that day as on your labouring 
days ; and think not that sloth is holy rest. 

4. Let your dressing time be short ; and let it be spent, 
if possible, in hearing another read, or in good thoughts, or 
suitable conversation to those about you. 

5. Begin with secret prayer, and let your servants de- 
spatch their necessary business, that it stand not afterwards 
in their way. 

6. Then call your children and servants to family wor- 
ship, and call on God with joyful thanksgiving for the 
redemption and the hopes of glory ; but do all with serious- 
ness and alacrity ; and tell your servants and children for 
what purpose it is that they go to church. 

7. Go early to the beginning of public worship. Let 



132 Moral Reforms. 

none be absent that can be spared to go. It is an affront 
to God, and a disturbance to the congregation, when you 
come in after the service has commenced; and you lose 
the opportunity of joining in the Confession, and the benefit 
of the authoritative sentence of Absolution. 

8. After your return, while dinner is preparing, meditate 
on the great business of the day, and consider what you 
have heard in the church, and endeavour to imprint it on 
your mind and memory. 

9. Indulge in no week-day talk, but let your time at 
meals be seasoned with some cheerful and pious conversa- 
tion, suitable to the hearers and the day. 

10. After dinner take your children again to church, and 
after your return betake yourself to devout meditation on 
what has passed in the day. 

11. At supper, as at dinner, remember that though it be 
a day of thanksgiving, yet it is not a day of sensuality and 
excess. 

12. But before supper examine your children and ser- 
vants what they have learned that day ; and catechize them : 
this duty must not be neglected. 

13. When you go to rest, review briefly the special oc- 
curences of the day ; repent .of your failings in divine wor- 
ship, give thanks for mercies, and compose yourself to rest, 
ready, if need be, to be called, before another day, to rest 
with God. 

Sunday evenings should be sacred to do- 
mestic enjoyment, of which reading and singing 
should be a great part. Sacred Music is al- 
ways delightful to children ; and I have known 



Our Common Schools. 133 

young men, when separated from their parents, 
deeply moved, for their good, by the return of 
Sunday evenings, and by the sweet associa- 
tions of the same with their Father and Mother 
and Home. 



x; 

Our Common Schools. 

Urgently as I have pressed the claims of 
the human soul to receive an education ad- 
justed to its wants, in Christian schools, where 
Science is baptized and sanctified, let no one 
suppose that I am an enemy to our Common 
School System. 

I know all that can be said against it, and 
I grieve that so much of it is forcible and 
cannot be denied. But the practical question 
is, What shall we put in the place of it ? 
The evils which it involves are inseparable 
from our social condition. If we consent to 
live in the United States of America, we ac- 
cept in our life, every day, a Social System 
7 



134 Moral Reforms. 

which is full of the evils we deplore in our 
Schools. The world is evil and all things 
are imperfect. We must be thankful to God 
for the unmerited good that abounds, in spite 
of evil, through the merits of a merciful Re- 
deemer, who loves all alike and " overcomes 
evil with good." The fact is, the Christian 
religion is so adapted to the human conscience, 
that, in spite of mans wickedness, he cannot 
rule it out of a system of education where 
Christian light is shining. " Against such 
there is no law ; " and, not denying their evils, 
our Common Schools do admit much Chris- 
tian light to minds and hearts, which, but for 
them, would be abandoned to ignorance and 
vice. I have visited many of these schools 
in Western New York, and I praise God that, 
on the whole, they are so good. If Christians 
would use their influence and assert their 
rights with more energy, they might be made 
far- better than they are. As Churchmen 
therefore, we can, consistently, sustain them; 
consenting to do all the good we can, where 
we can do no more. Our position, it seems 
to me, must be this : 



Ottr Common Schools. 135 

i. Secure to every human being the very 
best education you can provide for him. 

2. Where you can do no better, utilize 
the Common Schools, and supplement them 
by all additional means of doing good. 

3. But, where we can do better, let us do 
our full duty to our own children, and to all 
children, by gathering them into schools and 
colleges thoroughly Christian. 

A specious and dangerous alternative is just 
now making some headway ; but, of all men in 
the nation, Churchmen have the greatest 
reason to oppose it. The plan is to destroy 
the Common Schools, and to apportion the 
funds to ''private schools," according to the 
number taught in each. 

The result would be an intolerable corrup- 
tion, in all departments of the management. 

Political denominations would fairly rake the 
streets for heads to count as claims upon the 
fund, and politicians would use it for their 
own purposes. Of course, the Romanists 
would claim and would receive the lion's share. 
Their Arithmetic is wonderful, and their Moral 
Theology concerning oaths allows the widest 



136 Moral Reforms. 

exercise of imagination in making out returns 
and reports. a This proposal, therefore, is con- 
ceived in their interests, and wo ! to the land 
if they succeed in getting it adopted. 

Our immigrant population have the very 
greatest interests at stake : they should rally 
to the support of the Common Schools as the 
noblest privilege they enjoy, in becoming par- 
takers of our citizenship and of our free institu- 
tions. The man who does not stand to the 
defence of our School System, at such a crisis 
as this, is the enemy of his country ; and no 
Churchman who is not its supporter is true 
to the grand historic principles of the Church 
to which he nominally belongs. 

While these pages are passing through the 
press, my words receive the strongest corrobor- 
ation, in view of two signs of the times which 
may well alarm the American people. I am 
tempted to quote from a popular Journal, 1 * al- 
most an entire article, as follows : 

" The provision of the Tax Levy which gives' private 
schools 'twenty per cent, of the Excise Fund, will be a griev- 

a Liguori, vol. ii. de Juramentis. 
b New York Times, May 12 th, 1869. 



Our Common Schools. 137 

ous disappointment to all thoughtful citizens. The preser- 
vation of our school system has long been held to be the 
one great safeguard against the growing evils of politics 
in our large cities. While the children of the poor for- 
eigners can have the same instruction with our native 
citizens, while they can read the same books and catch 
the unconscious influence of modern science and progress, 
we need fear less the dangers from the votes of their ignor- 
ant fathers. The public felt sur% that every year a new 
class of intelligent and Americanized youth — though of 
foreign parentage — were added to the great population of 
city voters. It was evident that our public schools, though 
teaching nothing of religion, were breaking the power of 
priestcraft, simply by the spread of intelligence, and that 
the multitude of low foreign electors who had so long ruled 
in such cities as New York, was counterbalanced by a more 
intelligent and better educated set of young men, who were 
the legitimate fruit of our public school system. 

" We compared our condition with that of England with 
much complacency. Or we compared Prussia, where edu- 
cation was secular and universal, with Italy, where it had 
been local and under the power of the priests, and we con- 
gratulated ourselves that, with the vast number of sects in 
this country, and. the presence of an ignorant priesthood 
among us, our fathers had been able to found a system of 
public instruction which was secular, patriotic, in sympa- 
thy with the progress of the age, and freed from the control 
of all religious denominations. So deep has been the 
public feeling on this point that all wise and foreseeing 
citizens have looked with dread on the slightest attempt at 
innovation upon our public school system. 

"With such an immense foreign class here of ignorant 



138 Moral Reforms. 

people, already blindly following their priests, it seemed in 
the highest degree dangerous to deliver up anything of our 
public instruction to religious bodies. 

" But the blow so long feared has at length been struck. 
The measure, passed as a portion of the Tax Levy after an 
excited debate, gives a large grant of public moneys — 
probably $300,000 — to 'private schools/ Almost the only 
private schools, as is well known, which will claim this 
appropriation are the Church schools of the Romanists, 
which are exclusively sectarian, and only attended by chil- 
dren of that form of faith. They are, as a rule, frequented 
by children who could perfectly well attend the public 
schools, not even being fit for the lowest class of street 
children, or the most destitute poor. They are notoriously 
poorly taught, and would not bear a close inspection by the 
inspectors and examiners of the Board of Education. They 
are mainly instruments of the priesthood, and will be sure 
never to teach anything which will diminish priestly author- 
ity or encourage the scientific spirit. As private or Church 
schools, we have nothing to say against them ; they then 
escape public criticism. But as public schools, and taking 
their share of public taxes, they come fairly under our no- 
tice. We should object as much should the Episcopal or 
Presbyterian Church schools undertake thus to infringe on 
the field of the public schools, and demand a share of the 
public moneys. It is a most dangerous precedent, and 
opens a leak in our system of popular education which 
may sink it. 

" The provision of the Tax Levy also establishes none of 
the healthful safeguards which usually surround such appor- 
tionments of the public money. The large sum appropri- 
ated is to be ' allowed under the supervision of the Board 



Our Common Schools. 139 

of Education.' But no conditions are fixed. There are, 
as is well known, various sham charities in the city, with 
little squads of children gathered in cheap rooms, which are 
called 'private schools/ Are these to share in this appro- 
priation ? Is the money to be allotted after supervision by 
the officials of the Board, and according to the average 
attendance, or merely according to the partisan or sectarian 
feelings of the members of the Board ? 

" What is to prevent the Romanists or sham Protestant 
charities from getting it all, without reference to their real 
services in education ? 

" Does not the apportionment open an endless job before 
the Board? 

" If this large sum be withdrawn from the public taxes 
this year for this purpose, what may we not expect each 
year, as the foreign power increases through the growth of 
the City? Where will our public school system be in a 
few years hence ? " 

This is excellent, as far as it goes ; but, let 
us beware of making it a political question. 
It is a moral question, and should unite all 
lovers of the human race. For, at the very 
moment when we are confronted in New York 
by this infamous Tax Levy, we find in a man- 
ifesto, issued by a convention of Romish pre- 
lates, at Baltimore, the deep-laid scheme and 
system or> which Romanism is working out 
these changes in popular education. These 
emissaries of the Vatican speak as follows : 



140 Moral Reforms. 

" Bitter experiences convince us daily more and more 
that a purely secular education, to the exclusion of a religi- 
ous training, is not only an imperfect system, but is at- 
tended with the most disastrous consequences to the 
individual and to society." 

Now, every word of this may be true, and 
yet, as coming from them, it ean have only one 
meaning. The Gospel they come here to 
publish is the Gospel of the late Syllabus .of 
Pio Nono ; and the education which they 
would give us is the gross ignorance and su- 
perstition of Italy, Spain and Brazil. 

. Borrowing, almost verbally, my own alarm 
on the subject of ante-natal infanticide, the 
same titularies strive to turn this also to their 
account in the following extraordinary state- 
ment : 

" The abiding interest all feel in the preservation of the 
morals of our country constrains us to raise our voice 
against the daily increasing practice of infanticide, espe- 
cially before birth. The notoriety which this monstrous 
crime has obtained of late, and the hecatombs of infants 
that are annually sacrificed to Moloch to gratify an unlawful 
passion, are a sufficient justification for our alluding to a 
painful and delicate subject, which should .not even be 
mentioned among Christians. We may observe that the cry- 
ing sin of infanticide is most prevalent in those localities where 



Our Common Schools. 141 

the system of education without religion has been longest estab- 
lished and been most successfully carried out." 

Now, whether this be true or not, what is it 
to the purpose ? What could they give us in- 
stead? The morals of Italy? The morals 
of Monks and Convents, and Confessors and 
Inquisitors ? The morals of Alphonsus de' 
Liguori ? The morals of a priesthood, preying 
on the sanctities of families, and living in open 
concubinage, as in many Romish countries ? 
Do these writers imagine that we are ignorant 
of the sort of morals that exist wherever they 
have their own way ? That we have never 
read Pascal, and Scipio de Ricci, or the lives 
of their own popes and cardinals, as pourtrayed 
in their own historic documents ? The cool- 
ness of this manifesto is almost unparalleled, in 
view of its source and of the Syllabus which it 
is designed to supplement. But, as a sign of 
the times, it is of the utmost importance, and 
if our countrymen are not self-doomed to 
" swift destruction," they will not fail to take 
the alarm. 



142 Moral Reforms. 



XI. 

The House Bond. 

In what I have written, it may be thought 
that I have spoken too exclusively of woman's 
work and of woman's piety. But, I have, pur- 
posely, endeavoured to carry with me my read- 
ers of the sterner sex, who all approve of relig- 
ion in wives and mothers and sisters, unto this 
very point, where I can ask them a plain ques- 
tion. Do they expect to build their house 
without a main stay and support for it ? Can 
woman do everything for her household ? The 
husband is the house-bond; he who must hold 
together and sustain all that it is, and all that it 
contains. Noah built an Ark for the saving of 
himself and his family; and the house we now 
need for the Christian family is just such an 
Ark. Shall it be left to woman to be its 
architect and its support; to be the house-bond 
as well as the wife? 

Our bishops have lately called for more manly 



The House Bond. 143 

piety. It is greatly needed, nor can the Moral 
Reforms I have endeavoured to suggest as 
necessary be looked for until men become the 
priests of their own homes, and resolve, like the 
old prophet, for themselves and for their houses,* - 
to serve the Lord. 

We need guilds, or brotherhoods, also, corres- 
ponding to the sisterhoods I have spoken of, and 
having for their object, the aid of pastors in 
missionary and charitable works. In a word, I 
should be glad to borrow a leaf from John 
Wesley's book, and organize laymen into bands, 
as lay-readers and catechists ; but, I would have 
these bands connected with a primitive diaco- 
nate, providing, at least, one deacon for every 
Rector. 

In this way, we might organize a more effi-* 
cient financial system for all our church-work. 
I would have everybody, who claims to be a 
churchman, enrolled as an annual subscriber of 
some specified sum, less or greater, for such 
work ; this to be looked after by the guild, or 
brotherhood, and devoted under general canons 
to general or local objects. The money col- 
lected four times a year, under the rules of the 



144 Moral Reforms. 

guild, might be laid on the altar, at the offertory, 
and so sanctified and delivered into the Treas- 
ury of the Church, by the Rector. 

Such husbandry will come when each house 
^is provided with a true Christian house-bond. 
In commerce, we often hear of a " ship's hus- 
band;" and we may do well to remember that 
every parish, every church-school, in short, every 
interest of the Church, needs just such a stew- 
ardship. 



XII. 

The Future. 

■ The utter indifference of the American mind 
to the claims of Truth, as such, is portentous. 
The spirit of our people is the spirit of Pilate, 
who said " what is truth," and so delivered up 
Incarnate Truth to be crucified between two 
thieves. And this awful phenomenon, which 
nobody can deny, is the result of the Sect- 
scheme, in which so many even of our pious 
and educated men seem not only to acquiesce 



The Future. 145 

but even to exult, like a creature enjoying its 
own hideousness and deformity. To sustain it, 
there must be a theoretical concession that 
Truth is nowhere, or else everywhere. Hence, 
as a sort of plea for its own rights, the most 
rabid Sectarian bigotry will often be found 
affecting liberality in favour of some opposite 
form of errour, with which it happens to fear 
no immediate conflict, and will even patronize 
it, as being " not so bad as is supposed," or as 
"having much that is good in it." It used to 
be regarded as axiomatic that errour is danger- 
ous chiefly in proportion as it mixes itself with 
truth, and that evil is then most to be feared 
when it cloaks itself in external good. But not 
so now. If poison is but sugar-coated it is giv- 
en freely to children, and commended to man- 
kind ; and the enemy has only to put on a soft 
fleece to be sure of welcome, as a lamb. 

" I also will choose their delusions," saith the 
Lord. It would seem as if this were His decree 
concerning us. A Puritan pastor in Western 
New York is now sounding the praises of Po- 
pery, in our newspapers. Having made the 
discovery that it wears sheep's clothing, he 



146 Moral Reforms. 

would have us to believe that the Jesuit within 
is not, after all, a ravening wolf. Nothing is 
more acceptable to popular appetite than such a 
phenomenon * and any silly and conceited ad- 
venturer, who wishes to make a sensation, can 
succeed by turning pander to Popery in this 
way, at the very moment when its political ag- 
gressions, and its daring assaults on our institu- 
tions, demand the most energetic and serious 
combinations, to resist it. 

In fact, it is just from such a class of minds 
as the Puritan pastor represents, that Rome has 
most to expect. Breaking away from a relig- 
ion of narrowness and prejudice, and discovering 
how much it has been deceived, it is ready to 
adopt the extreme opposite of its former delu- 
sion. The stark nakedness of Puritanism pre- 
pares it to .admire the meretricious adornings of 
Romanism ; and its utter destitution of any 
claim to what is ancient and venerable, inclines it 
to be profoundly impressed by the delusive pre- 
tensions of Romanism to all that can satisfy the 
mind, in this respect. When a Puritan begins 
to admire pictures and statues, he naturally falls 
down to worship them. 



The Fttttire. 147 

Here, then, is the phenomenon of the times, 
a people indifferent to Truth and blind to the 
lessons of history and experience. Every form 
of errour finds, in this, its advantage and makes 
headway by this means. If a greater danger 
is to be apprehended from Romanism, however, 
it is in consequence of its organization and me- 
chanical strength. Inorganic Protestantism has 
nothing to operate with against such a concen- 
tration of forces. Will the minds of pious 
Protestants never be awakened to this fact, till 
" Parley the Porter," a having drunk deep of the 
wine of the Flatterwells, unbars the wicket of 
the castle, and lets in the banditti ? 

The claims of Historical and Organic Chris- 
tianity must be recognized sooner or later. 
Meantime, let us who enjoy its blessings be 
aware of our responsibilities and live not for 
ourselves alone. We must provide the re- 
sources which will be called for, by-and-by, by 
all thinking men, with clamours of alarm and 
agony. 

For myself, so sweet is the shelter of this 

a As I see a Puritan pastor thus parleying with Popery, I am re- 
minded of this striking allegory of Hannah More. 



148 Moral Reforms. 

blessed Ark, which God has provided for me 
and for those who are dear to me, that I could 
consent, were it consistent with duty, to en- 
joy its tranquillity in calm contentment, and so 
to rise nearer to heaven, every day, on the very 
deluge that is overspreading the highest de- 
fences of others. But, the Master's precept will 
not permit me to do this ; I must sound the 
trumpet to warn others of coming danger. 

That the gravest civil dangers now threaten 
us I feel so sure, that I am glad of an opportu- 
nity to record my convictions. It is humiliating 
even to seem to share in the stupidity with 
which hundreds, who ought to be watchmen, per- 
mit themselves to slumber and sleep. The 
Trojan horse is dragged into our citadel, by a 
popular frenzy ; the viper is placed on our 
hearthstone by dull simplicity; and all the while 
the sentinel and the householder look on and 
smile. 

In our own Church, are some who play with 
hre, like children, and who seem not to suspect 
that it may kindle a conflagration. Experience 
is lost on us ; Jesuitry plays its old tricks, and 
we are no wiser than before. There is little in- 



The Future. 149 

dependence ; there is too little sense of the tre- 
mendous responsibility of those who have eyes 
in their heads. 

If, as the consequence, such a Church as ours 
is not destined to obtain that mastery over 
mind and manners to which its inestimable 
merits entitle it, it is something to separate 
one's self from those within, whose follies must 
answer for the failure, and from those without 
who are blindly indifferent to the goodness of 
God in providing so richly for their temporal 
and eternal welfare. A Church at once old and 
new, Catholic and Scriptural, and progressive 
as historical, endowed with all that is pure and 
precious in antiquity, and yet freed from the 
clogs of superstition and the craft of kings and 
popes ; such is the gift, but are we worthy to 
receive it ? 

Nothing seems more probable, than that God 
will scourge the Sectarianism of America by 
Romanism, and force a thorough Reformation 
on all true Christians by persecution and suffer- 
ing. The triumph of the truly Catholic System 
of our own Apostolic Church, must be the re- 
sult of purification, of sobriety and of after- 



150 Moral Reforms. 

thought. The popular taste is unprincipled and 
unrefined. It admires the poppy more than the 
rose, and prefers the flesh-pots of Egypt to man- 
na from heaven. It delights not in the creed, 
because it weighs and studies nothing so little 
as the Holy Scriptures. Its Sunday-reading is 
made up of low novels and illustrated gazettes. 
This general appetite for what is gaudy and 
sensual and false forbids us to expect any im- 
mediate" recourse, on the part of the million, to 
the chaste and simply primitive system of our 
own Church. On the contrary, weak minds 
and coarse natures, among ourselves, will try 
to popularize our modest ritual by conforming it, 
as much as possible, to external patterns of vul- 
gar show and senseless ceremony. Soon, there 
may be only a few, in Sardis, that will be content 
to keep their garments and to walk in white. 
But let the sober-minded rejoice in the consola- 
tions of their holy religion and in the promises of 
the Saviour. We are living in the enjoyment 
of the greatest spiritual blessings which can be 
given to man ; we have these for ourselves and 
for our children. In the end, our cause must 
triumph, for it is simply the cause of Christ, 



The Future, 151 

and of His own institutions, in all their Scriptu- 
ral simplicity and in all their organic strength. 
Let us read the first chapters of the Apocalypse 
and learn what suits our position at such a cri- 
sis ; " what the Spirit saith unto the Churches." 
Then let us strive to save our own souls, for a 
prey. Time is very short ; Eternity is very 
long ; the end is at hand. " Come my people, 
enter thou into thy chambers and shut thy doors 
about thee ; hide thyself, as it were for a little 
moment, until the indignation be overpast" 



WRITINGS OF BISHOP COXE; 

PUBLISHED BY 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO 

PHILADELPHIA. 



I. Impressions of England. 

A new Edition soon to be published. 

N. B. — This work was recommended by the late Washington Irving, to his per- 
sonal friends, as the best companion for a visit to England, or as a study of English 
scenes and manners. 

II. Thoughts on the Services. 

An Edition of this little work has been printed with large Margin, 
and is put up in fine bindings, for presents. As a' tract, it has been 
found very useful in introducing strangers to the Life and System of the 
Church. 

III. Halloween and Lays chiefly Devotional. 

A new Edition of this early production of the author of Christian 
Ballads has been lately published. 

IV. The Bride's Book. 

Now in preparation. 

V. The Remission of Sins. 

The primary charge of the Bishop of Western New York will soon 
be published. 

VI. Covenants Prayers, for the use of Households. 

In preparation. 



Writings of Bishop Coxe. 

VII. The Common English Bible ■ its history, and an 
Apology for preferring its unmutilated form. 

N. B. Constant inquiries are made for "the Apology," which appeared in 1857, 
and went rapidly through three editions ; but the immediate interest it awakened 
subsided very naturally, on the practical acquiesence of the American Bible Society 
in its argument, followed by the suppression of their mutilated editions. 

Calls for a new edition of the Apology have grown out of other experiments with 
the text of the English Bible which are now making, and by the occasional reappear- 
ance of the Society's mutilated Bibles on the shelves of Booksellers. 

The author proposes, therefore, to present a new edition of this little work, with a 
historical prefix, if his publishers shall feel justified, by previous orders, in putting it 
to press. 

Messrs. J. B. Lippincott & Co., invite orders accordingly. The book will be pub- 
lished in the style of the "Moral Reforms," and will make about 200 pages, designed 
for general circulation among Bible readers, and for permanent use in parish libraries. 
It will contain a view of the Interpretation of Scripture which was delivered as a Lec- 
ture in St. Stephen's Church, in Philadelphia, in the Winter Course of 1854, under 
the patronage of Bishop Potter. 

VIII. Stories for Sundays, illustrating the Catechism, 
by Mrs. Sherwood. Revised and edited by Bishop Coxe. 

N. B. This book is now stereotyped and prepared for permanent utility in all 
Christian households. Few believers in the "articles of the Christian Faith" will 
find in it anything which they would deem objectionable. 

In the beauty and simplicity of its diction and in the exquisite pictures it presents 
of Hindoo life and of the scenery of India, it is unrivalled. Perhaps no book in the 
language is likely to do more than this to awaken in children's minds a true Mission- 
ary Spirit. 

IX. Ritualism. A Pastoral Letter. 



X. Moral Reforms, with general remarks on practical 
religion. 

N. B. A liberal discount to rectors and others ordering a considerable number for 
parochial distribution. 



